The European mobile market is gradually becoming more democratic, with virtually every market seeing penetration levels of 100% or more. In this environment, there are few changes and the list of the largest operators reflects this. Only one company has entered this list over the last quarter and, in all, there have only been two changes in position. T-Mobile Germany has overtaken Turkcell, to regain the second spot in Europe, behind TIM of Italy, while Polkomtel of Poland has nudged its compatriot PTC out of the top 20, by a margin of less than 0.25m.
The list is absolutely dominated by Vodafone companies. The world leader has five subsidiaries in the top 20, in Germany (4th), Italy (5th), UK (12th), Spain (16th) and Turkey (17th). In addition, two of its associates also feature, SFR in France (11th) and the aforementioned Polkomtel (20th). No other major operator has more than two representatives. T-Mobile has businesses in second and 13th places, Telefonica is in eighth and tenth positions and Orange companies occupy ninth and 15th. In last week's issue of the Briefing (Issue 71) we reflected on the question of which properties would be best to own when the industry finally matures and this fairly succinctly underlines the point we made then - no other business is anywhere near as well-positioned as Vodafone and short of a major, not to say huge, merger, it looks as though no other one could ever be, if Vodafone keeps its nerve and keeps hold of these properties.
As it is, the point at which the market can be said to be "mature" is approaching, if not upon us already. Only one European market saw double digit growth in the quarter - the somewhat anomalous market of Kosovo - and some countries even saw a reduction in the size of their mobile bases - Norway, Lithuania and Malta. Only four companies added one million or more customers in the quarter, while only eleven managed to reach the half million mark. These are shown in the chart below and once again, Vodafone is well represented.
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 20th June 2007
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