Top 20 cellcos now control 57% of world's subscribers
Published: 26 June, 2009
Mobile services are increasingly a business of scale, and recent waves of consolidation mean that the top 20 global cellco groups now control 57% of all the world's mobile connections.
According to new figures from Wireless Intelligence, these 20 carriers have about 2.4bn connections, spanning 118 of 223 markets tracked (the figures include operators' businesses in any markets where they have between 51% and 100% ownership of a carrier).
China Mobile leads the field because, even though it only operates in China and Hong Kong, it still has 11.5% of global connections, at 479m - almost twice that of Vodafone Group, which has 247m subscribers across 19 markets where they hold a majority stake in a cellco (10 of these in western Europe, the others spread around eastern Europe, India and MEA).
In close contention for third and fourth places come Telefónica and its chief rival in the Latin American region, América Móvil of Mexico (which controls Telmex). These two operate in 13 of the same markets, and boast 190.1m and 174.9m connections respectively.
In terms of the proportion of the global base that has adopted 3G or beyond, NTT DoCoMo is the leader, with 95% of its base on 3G, followed by other carriers that are largely confined to developed markets - Verizon Wireless in second on 59.3%, then AT&T on 31.4%. Other operators that boast huge levels of 3G penetration of their subscriber bases fall outside the global top 20 but include KT of Korea (100%), Hutchison Whampoa Group (96%), SoftBank Mobile Japan (92%) and SKT (86%).
Vodafone, France Telecom/Orange and TeliaSonera currently all have about 16%-18% 3G penetration, as they have expanded significantly in emerging economies in MEA and India, where 3G networks are often new or unavailable.
The rest of the top 20 in terms of total global mobile connections is as follows: China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom/T-Mobile, Telenor, MTS of Russia/CIS, Verizon Wireless, France Telecom/Orange, pan-MEA group MTN, AT&T, Telekomsel of Indonesia, Telecom Italia, Russia's VimpelCom, Weather Investments Group (controller of half of Orascom plus Wind, TIM Hellas and others), another MEA giant Zain, Reliance of India, Orascom (its direct holdings), and with NTT DoCoMo bringing up the rear on 54.7m connections.
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