Mobile penetration in Poland progressed from 76% to 95% during 2006, as annual net additions reached a record 7.33m, helped by an all-time quarterly record of 2.32m in Q3 2006. Average quarterly growth has been falling slightly for the last two years, from 7.3% in 2004 to 6.0% in 2005 to 5.8% in 2006, bringing rolling annual customer growth to its lowest level ever of 25.1% for the full year 2006.
Nevertheless, an annual growth rate which has never dropped below 25% is in itself an achievement given that SIM card penetration in the Polish market is now almost 100%. What is more, the decline was not large enough to prevent net additions going in the other direction - from an average of 1.42m per quarter in 2004 to 1.52m in 2005 and to over 1.83m in 2006.
As we have remarked in previous issues of the Briefing, the Polish market is one of the most closely fought in the world in terms of customer numbers. And in 2006 the three operators moved closer together than ever before, with just 236k customers separating first and third places at the end of the year - an overall size difference of just 2% In the fourth quarter Orange Poland (PTK Centertel) reclaimed the first position which it lost in the third quarter, ending the year with 12.251m customers - just 23,000 ahead of second placed PTC, which is now majority owned by Deutsche Telekom. This gave the top two operators end-of-year market shares of 33.6% and 33.5% respectively, with Vodafone associate Polkomtel third on 32.9%.
The balance may be about to be upset by the entry of greenfield 3G operator P4 (owned by altco Netia) under the brand "Play" this month (March 2007) after numerous delays.
The company's 3G network will not be commercially launched until Q3 2007 because of delays in regulatory approvals for the build-out, and so the launch - should it indeed take place - will be through the national roaming agreement with Polkomtel. Whilst this will disrupt the remarkable equilibrium in the Polish market, we doubt that Play will be able to grab a significant amount of market share from the well-established and well-financed trio which currently share Poland's 36.5m mobile customers.
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World. To download a sample issue of the Briefing in PDF format, please click here. For more information including full subscription pricing, please visit The Mobile World"
Posted to the site on 15th March 2007
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/22591.php