Malaysia’s mobile subscriber base hit the 20 million mark as the penetration level reached a staggering 80% in March this year. However, experts are predicting that this could go up to 85% by year-end despite a saturating market.
A slower single-digit growth in subscribers is seen for the second half of this year (H2) compared with double-digit growth rates charted previously.
Analysts expect that by year-end, the country’s mobile subscriber base would reach 22 million, of which a third would be prepaid users, considered by some operators as active mobile subscribers.
“It would be a challenging second half, with competition heating up again in the prepaid segment since price cuts have already been introduced for the post-paid segment.
“Churn would be another issue operators have to face in H2,” an analyst said, adding that some downside in the post-paid segment could be expected.
The country’s three celcos recently announced their financial results for the first three months ended March 31.
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Meanwhile, a mobile subscriber base of 20 million means that four in five persons are mobile subscribers but in reality, one person may own one, two or even three SIM cards.
Of the 20 million, analysts said about 17.5 million are prepaid users, where the churn is said to be nearly 60%.
Six months ago, the country’s mobile penetration was at 68.2%, with mobile subscribers reaching 17.5 million out of a population of nearly 26 million.
The analyst said there was bound to be some double counting, given the widespread prepaid penetration but with churn, the market should “stabilise at some point”.
He said the ongoing registration of prepaid users should help weed out the non-active users and could possibly give a more accurate picture of the actual mobile base, although this would be more evident early next year.
Getting a new subscriber in a saturated market and hoping to earn more from that subscriber can be a challenge, given that consumers move networks for the best bargains, and this would continue to put pressure on celcos’ average revenue per users (Arpu) in H2.
For the first quarter of this year, the post-paid Arpu for Maxis, Celcom and DiGi stood at RM137, RM109 and RM96 respectively, while that for prepaid was RM49, RM38 and RM51 respectively.
An analyst expects single-digit growth in revenue for the three celcos for the full year.
For the first quarter of this year, Maxis’ revenue grew 1% quarter-on-quarter despite a subscriber growth of 4% due to weaker Arpus, said an analyst in his report.
During that quarter, Maxis earned RM484mil in net profit (from its Malaysia operations) on the back of RM1.69bil sales, up from RM1.68bil in the previous quarter.
Celcom’s revenue, however, fell to RM1bil in the first quarter of this year from RM1.1bil in the fourth quarter of 2005, while that of DiGi rose to RM861mil from RM826mil.
Maxis still dominates in market share in terms of revenue at 47%, Celcom at 29.1% and DiGi at 23.9%, compared with 46.3%, 30.9% and 22.8% respectively in the last quarter of 2005.
An analyst said that while the second half of 2006 would be tough for celcos, the “risks would heighten with the expected introduction of mobile number portability by year-end.” -theStar
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