Top teen Asia Pacific Operators

Over the the last few quarters there has been little or no change at the
top of the list of of the Asia Pacific region's largest operators. China
mobile is still the number one and is still by far the largest mobile
operator in the world, with the best part of 300M customers as at
December 2006. However, this is not to suggest that the Asia Pacific
mobile market is anything other than highly dynamic - five of the ten
largest companies in the region were not in the top ten last year and
two were barely in the top 20.
The main difference between this year and the end of 2005 is the
appearance of no fewer than five companies from the Indian
sub-continent, four of them from India itself. At the end of December,
as noted, China Mobile headed the list with 299.9m customers, or 28.7%
of the region's 1.05bn total. This, in fact represents a material loss
of regional market share, as one year earlier the number one accounted
for over 30% of the region's 817m customers. China Unicom, the world's
second largest national operator shared the same fate - but to an even
greater degree. It closed the year with a total of 142.4m customers, or
13.6% of the regional total. That's a full two percentage points down on
the 2005 figure. This is by far the largest drop in market share in the
region and in fact, it is measurable on global scale- Unicom accounted
for 5.86% of the 2005's subscribers but only 5.26% of the 2006 total.
Only one other member of the top ten - Japan's KDDI - accounted for a
decline proportion of the global total year on year. Japan has two
representatives on the list, the aforementioned KDDI and DoCoMo, which
is the third largest company in the region. the Japanese number one
ended 2006 with 52.2m customers almost exactly 5% of the regional total.
This is a marginal year on year increase, which is mirrored at the
global level with a rise from 1.84% to 1.93% Fourth place is taken by
Telkomsel, as it was last year.
The Indonesian number one is some way behind DoCoMo, with 35.6m
customers, and the main threat to DoCoMo's third place probably comes
from further west, from India, Indian companies account for four of the
remaining six places and as we shall see in the next section, all are
growing dramatically Bharti is the largest of the four, with 31.97m
customers, which gives it fifth place. It was eighth last year. During
the last twelve months Bharti has added more than one percent to its
regional market share, which has risen from 2.00% to 3.06%. It now has
comfortably more than one percent of the global market. Bharti's growth
has been matched by Reliance, which has moved into the top ten from 11th
place last year. It ended 2006 with just under 30m customers, or 2.87%
regional market share. The next company is on the way down - and perhaps
out- of the top ten, KDDI added a fair number of customers to close 2006
with 25.48m, but dropped from fifth to seventh lossing relative status
along the way in 2005, it had a 2.60% market share in the region and
just under one percent globally:; these percentages have now dropped
from 2.44% to 0.94% respectively. With numbers eight, nine and ten all
growing far faster, a drom to tenth next year seems inevitable. KDDI is
helped by the fact that numbers 11 to 16 are all heading in the same
(relative) direction. India's BSNL seems certain to overtake it, if not
in the first quarter, then the second. BSNL moved up from 13th to
eighth, ending the year with 23.62m customers, for a gain of just under
0.5% in regional market share.
However, BSNL's position is not invulnerable and in all probability, it
will be overtaken by its national rival Hutch, which Vodafones is in the
process of acquiring. Hutch has moved from 16th to ninth, the largest
positional gain over the year. It began the period with 1.40% market
share and ended it with 2.23%, which equates to 23.3m customers Finally,
tenth place is taken by Pakistan Mobile., which now has 22.49m
customers. It too moved up seven places during the year, but added
slightly less to its market share in the process than Hutch. What of the
rest of last year's list? The sub-continentals have relegated them to a
position outside the regional top ten and in all probability that is
where they will remain from now on.
SK Telecom, last year's number six is now eleventh, AIS is down from
seventh to twelfth place, Smart has fallen from ninth to 13th and
Softbank, the former Vodafone Japan, has collapsed to 16th, after tenth
last year. Proportionately, the largest losers were SK and Softbank,
which now account for 45bp and 37bp less of the regional market than
they did last year. We should point out here that as at the tome of
writing we await with baited breath news of the effects of the Indian
Department of Telecommunications mobile customer verification procedure.
Preliminary figures from CDMA/GSM operator Reliance show that
disconnections from unverified accounts amount for 15% of its total
base, and the numbers could be worse from the pure GSM companies.
However, whilst the Indian operators may fall in the rankings as a
result, the cull is a one-off, and there us no doubt that they will
quickly recover the lost ground.