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Brazil Q4 2008 Market Update - Almost 10m Added in Best Quarter Ever
The Brazilian market passed the 150m customer mark during Q4 08 and recorded a best-ever figure for quarterly net additions. The gain of 9.85m was more than 1.6m higher than the previous best of 8.22m, the Q4 07 figure. With a year-end total of 150.62m, Brazilian penetration stood at 78.1%. Annual growth was down slightly on the 24.9% recorded in both Q2 08 and Q3 08, but at 24.5% it was still higher than the 2007 figure of 21.1%. In real terms, annual growth was even more impressive with an all-time high of 29.66m net additions in 2008, up 8.61m on the 2007 gain.
For the second successive quarter, the top performer in Q4 08 was Claro (Telecom Americas), the second largest operator in the market by customer numbers. Having broken its record for quarterly net additions in Q3 08 with a figure of 2.55m, it went on to break it again in Q4 08, adding 3.06m - the highest figure ever recorded in the market on an organic basis. It had 38.73m customers at the end of the year, giving it a lead of more than 2m over third-placed TIM Brasil, despite the fact that it only gained second place in the market in Q2 08.
However, Claro remained well behind market leader Vivo (Brasilcel), which ended the year on 44.95m customers. It added 2.67m during the quarter, an all-time high if we exclude the Q2 08 figure of 6.11m which was boosted by the acquisition of Telemig. Oi (TNL) posted the third-best figure for quarterly net additions with 2.52m, taking its total to 24.39m at the end of the year. It remained more than 12m behind third-placed TIM Brasil, which added just under 1.20m to finish on 36.40m. Oi was the fastest growing operator on a proportionate basis with annual growth of 52.6%, ahead of Vivo (34.2%), Brasil Telecom (31.5%) and Claro (28.1%). In fact, every operator in the market improved on its 2007 growth rate, with the exception of TIM Brasil, which was down 6.5pp at 16.5%.
Four out of the five top operators recorded drops in ARPU, which suggests that price cuts are fuelling growth. All finished under BRL30, with Oi the lowest on BRL22.70 (unchanged compared to Q4 07) and TIM the highest on BRL29.90, down 13.3% year on year.
Posted to the site on 6th April 2009
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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