Statistics from the Indian agencies representing the country's two mobile network technologies, GSM and CDMA, indicate that mobile customer numbers moved close to 150m by the end of January 2007, an increase of 85% year on year. Customer numbers climbed over 6.6m in January alone with over 213,000 net new connections being made per day during the month. Just under a quarter of these net additions were to one of the country's six CDMA mobile networks, adding to a total CDMA base which accounted for just over a quarter of the total customer count at the end of January - almost 39m customers.
India is now the third largest CDMA market in the world, having overtaken China towards the end of December 2006. However, according to our estimates, at the end of February 2007 (or at the latest the beginning of March) the size of the Indian CDMA customer base will exceed that of South Korea, which ended 2006 with 40.2m CDMA customers, moving India into second place behind the United States.
Not only is India expected to become the second largest mobile CDMA market in the world by the end of February, it is also expected to go third in the world overall, ahead of Russia. Russia itself broke the 150m barrier in December, but is growing much slower than India - around 2.05m customers per month on average in 2006, versus 5.55m on the sub-continent. We estimate that it will be early 2008 before India claims its rightful place, by population, of second - overtaking the United States which currently occupies the position.
Bharti Airtel extended its lead at the head of the Indian mobile market in January 2007, increasing customer numbers from 31.97m to 33.73m and national market share from 22.4% to 22.6% over the 31 days. Reliance Communications remains second with 31.39m customers and a 21.0% share of the total market (2.6% through its GSM operator and 18.4% through its CDMA unit), whilst BSNL remains third with 24.77m customers. The state-owned operator has been gradually losing market share, however, with a drop of more than 3pp in the year to 31st January when it claimed 16.6% of the national total.
Vodafone's new acquisition Hutch ended the month on 16.4% - equivalent to 24.4m customers - and could well take third place by the end of February. That it will do so soon, if not by the end of this month, is in little doubt, especially given the added impetus the operator is likely to quickly benefit from when the world's leading operator takes the helm."
Posted to the site on 21st February 2007
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/22166.php