{"id":319378,"date":"2019-05-28T18:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-05-28T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=319378"},"modified":"2019-05-28T16:58:17","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T14:58:17","slug":"mobile-market-share-2019-vodacom-vs-mtn-vs-cell-c-vs-telkom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/319378\/mobile-market-share-2019-vodacom-vs-mtn-vs-cell-c-vs-telkom\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile market share 2019: Vodacom vs MTN vs Cell C vs Telkom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Telkom has published its full year results for the period ending March 2019, reporting massive growth in its active mobile subscriber base.<\/p>\n

The group said it added 4.5 million new mobile customers in the 12 month period, taking its base from 5.2 million in FY2018, to 9.7 million in 2019.<\/p>\n

Telkom is South Africa’s fourth largest mobile operator.<\/p>\n

The country’s biggest operator, Vodacom, said that it added 1.5 million local customers<\/a><\/strong> for the year ended March 2019, taking its subscriber base to 43.2 million.<\/p>\n

In a recent quarterly update, MTN reported a slight drop in its local numbers to 30 million customers, from 31.2 million at the end of December 2018.<\/p>\n

While Cell C is not a listed company in South Africa, its subscriber numbers are presented by Blue Label Telecoms which owns a large stake in the group. For its full year results, Blue Label reported 17.2 million subscribers for Cell C, up from 16.3 million in the previous period.<\/p>\n

Newer entrants like Rain Mobile do not publish their subscriber numbers and are thus excluded in this analysis – but MVNO data, where available, is included.<\/p>\n

The MVNO market includes the likes of FNB Connect, Me&You Mobile, Pick n Pay, MRP Mobile and others. Most of these networks run on the Cell C network, which is included in the group’s reporting.<\/p>\n

Total MVNOs on Cell C’s network were at 1.8 million, according to Blue Label.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Context<\/strong><\/p>\n

The reported data presented here is based on the latest-available numbers from the respective companies.<\/p>\n

MTN’s financial year end was December 2018, but its latest quarterly update aligns with Vodacom and Telkom’s data, which is from the end of March 2019.<\/p>\n

Cell C’s is the only outlier, with its most recent data taken from Blue Label Telecoms’ reporting<\/a><\/strong>, which represents data from the end of November 2018.<\/p>\n

BusinessTech asked Cell C for its subscriber numbers at the end of March 2019, but the company did not respond by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

The graph below shows the context of the data, in terms of what the numbers represent:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Market share<\/strong><\/p>\n

Using these reported numbers, we are able to determine the general overall makeup of South Africa\u2019s mobile market, and which operators dominate, and to what extent.<\/p>\n

According to the total reported figures, there are approximately 102 million mobile connections in the country.<\/p>\n

This number is not reflective of unique mobile subscribers, but rather the number of active SIMs, attached either to multiple devices or machines.<\/p>\n

An approximation of South Africa\u2019s mobile market as reported by GSMA Intelligence for the first quarter of 2019 shows that the country is approaching 100 million mobile connections, giving it a penetration rate of 172%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

While Vodacom and MTN still completely dominate the local mobile market, Telkom’s recent growth in mobile subscribers has changed the picture significantly.<\/p>\n

Specifically, Telkom appears to have almost doubled its market share, now accounting for 9.4% of the reported numbers, eating away at both MTN and Vodacom.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Read: Telkom Mobile adds 4.5 million subscribers in a year<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telkom has reported adding 4.5 million subscribers to its mobile network in the past year – shaking up the mobile market share landscape in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":266449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[42,26,28,65,27],"class_list":["post-319378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319378"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319912,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319378\/revisions\/319912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}