Glo Mobile is expected to end the year on a strong footing after more than doubling its share in the subscriber market within two months of operations in the country.
The Nigerian-owned mobile operator, which began operations beginning-May this year, acquired two percent of the market share within 30 days of launching its service in the country and has since increased its share to four percent at the end of June.
Glo thus seems to have benefitted from its marketing strategy of allowing interested customers to reserve their numbers on the network before it launched, as well as implementation of the mobile number portability system.
The Director of Marketing Operations of Glo West-Africa, George Andah, said prior to the launch of network that more than 1.8 million customers had reserved their numbers on the network — the majority of whom struggled to claim their numbers when the network finally went live.
Now more mobile phone consumers seem to have acquired the Glo SIM cards, causing MTN and Airtel to lose market share.
According to the National Communication Authority (NCA), Glo Mobile increased its active subscriber numbers from 468,508 in May to 990,556 in June. This represents four percent of the total market share.
Despite this performance, Glo maintained its position as the fifth-biggest network operator in the county as all the five other operators all achieved gains, albeit marginal, in their subscriber numbers.
The latest market figures by the Authority show that Expresso, the smallest network operator, also made gains in its subscriber numbers between May and June, this year.
Expresso increased its subscriber base by 16 percent to close at 227,396 in the period under review. Nonetheless, Expresso still controls one percent of the mobile telephony market.
MTN, which has over the years led the mobile network market, also had a marginal increase in its subscriber base — but had a 100 basis point drop in its market share to close the half-year at 46 percent.
It however maintained its position as market-leader with a subscriber base of 10,757,974.
Vodafone?s subscriber base of more than 4.8 million represents 21 percent of the total market share as Tigo also had a marginal increase in its subscriber base, to close at 3.5 million representing 15% of the market.
Airtel managed to add on only 6,300 new subscribers to its customer base to close at 3,021,863; its market share dropped by 100 basis points to achieve 13 percent of the total market.
Currently, there are six mobile operators in the country who are all competing for significant market share in a market of about 25 million people.
According to the NCA, the total figure for the mobile telephone market now stands at 23.3 million.
By Evans Boah-Mensah
