India Wireless Telecom Market: December 2013

Maharashtra ends the year with considerable lead while Airtel continues to dominate

Source: TRAI

India’s active mobile subscriber base increased to 762.39 million in December 2013 …

·       Indian wireless telecom market ends December 2013 with subscriber base of 886.30 million, addition of 5.16 million, monthly growth rate of 0.59%

·       Overall mobile teledensity stands at 71.69% (Urban:  138.94%, Rural: 41.95%)

·       Urban to rural subscriber ratio is 59.42% to 40.58%

·       Rural market expanded by 2.33 million mobile subscribers at a monthly growth rate of

0.65% while urban subscriber base increased 2.83 million, growth of 0.54%

·       According to VLR data, India had 762.40 million active mobile subscribers. Hence, actual wireless teledensity in India is 61.67% by December 2013

·       In December 2013, about 2.50 million subscribers submitted Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requests which is about 0.28% of total mobile subscriber base in India

 

Bharti Airtel leads with 25.0% share as market continues to focus on active subscriber base eliminating inactive subscribers….

·       Bharti Airtel maintains its leadership position with 25.0% market share in India

·       Idea has largest proportion of active mobile users at 100.98% followed by Bharti Airtel (96.23%) and Vodafone (95.63%)

·       State-owned BSNL+MTNL with only 57.53% of active mobile subscriber base is certainly struggling in highly competitive and dynamic market environment raising lot of concerns about their future

·       While Tata (67.24%) and Aircel (64.22%) are way behind leading pack in terms of active user proportion raising doubts about long term sustainability of their business model

·       Vodafone (2.37 million), Bharti (1.80 million) and Aircel (1.63 million) led in terms of net subscriber additions during December 2013 while BSNL (-2.04 million) performed poorly

·       Top 5 players in Indian wireless telecom industry accounts for 84.1% market share in terms of active subscriber base

 

Maharashtra strengthened its leadership position …

·       Maharashtra with 65.01 million active mobile users is leading followed by U.P. (East) with 62.69 million active mobile subscribers

·       With 92.24% of active subscribers, Maharashtra is the most active circle while Tamil Nadu with 74.08% active users is least active

·       Andhra Pradesh (57.48 million) is third followed by Tamil Nadu (55.00 million) at fourth. Bihar with 52.69 million active mobile subscribers is the 5^th largest market wireless telecom market in India