For a period of five years (from 2001 to 2006) the proportion of mobile telephony users in the country has virtually tripled – fromт 18% to 60%. During the past year the growth in the number of new users is not of the same scale, which shows that the mobile communications market has presumably reached its limit. From now on attracting new clients will be increasingly tough, which also means fierce competition for the present customers.
The forthcoming launch of the third-generation networks and the broken monopoly on the landline market are the other key events determining the trends in the sphere of telecommunications in 2007.
Mobile telecommunications market – current users and market potential.
Currently 59% of the Bulgarians use the services of the mobile telecommunication networks and 8% are subscribers of more than one operator. This means that there are slightly over 4 million individual users in the country.
The coverage of the various demographic groups is strongly varied, where the greatest variations were found in two indicators: age and type of settlement. In the capital city 80% of the adult population is already covered, in the district centers the percentage is up to 75% while in the small towns and villages it is a marginal 50% plus. The age differences are even more pronounced - 92% of the people under 30 own a mobile phone, in the middle age group (30 to 50) this share is around 80%, and in the age group 51-60 the proportion of users remains at 56% and falls drastically down to a quarter (23%) in the age group over 60.
These results show saturation with mobile phones among the most active part of the population and project a future internal competition between the operators for redistribution of the current clients.
Operator shares Currently Mtel is the market leader. Its users are roughly equally divided between the pre-paid cards/packages and the subscription plans. With Globul the difference is in favour of the subscriptions (a ratio of 53% to 47% pre-paid cards). Vivatel demonstrates the reverse proportion in favour of the pre-paid cards (54% to 46% subscribers). The market share of Mobicom is too small for statistical evaluation of this type.
The difference in the tariffs and the higher prices of the calls between the mobile networks forces some of the users to maintain accounts with different operators. Thus nearly every tenth Bulgarian is a subscriber of more than one operator.
The largest joint group of customers is between Mtel and Globul – around 270 000 are subscribers of both operators at the same time. This is followed by the shared group between Mtel and Vivatel (some 120 000 persons, while the overlapping between Globul and Vivatel is lesser (60 000 users).
Trends on the market of mobile services
Although the mobile services are increasingly affordable, the market saturation is largely dependent on the incomes and means of the users. At present the active operators have the least coverage among the people with the lowest income (less than BGN 50 per household member), with basic education, the elderly and the residents of small settlements.
This goes to show once again that the future market development will find its most serious expression in the redistribution of the current clients and to a lesser extent in attracting new ones. The survey outlined a capacity for new clients within the limits of 300-400 thousand persons. What is more, those will be less solvent and therefore not so attractive users.
In this situation two aspects will be of crucial importance, namely the attitudes of the current clients to switching between operators and the readiness to facilitate this switching practice.
| Phone/Fax: | + 359 (2) 986 90 75 + 359 (2) 983 60 56 + 359 (2) 983 61 68 |
| e-mail: | headoffice@aresearch.org |
