Archive for July 18th, 2008
Emerging Markets: Mobile market review – Sudan 2008
The Sudanese market is a prepaid market of over 8M subscribers and with a potential of 6-7M net adds within the next six years. 3 operators cover the total market share in 2008: Zain with almost a 50%, MTN & Sudani with near to a 25% each. Recent signs of market stagnation has been seen in the last quarters that have been heavily answered by Zain and Sudani with value-destruction initiatives (e.g. deployment of non-revenues-generating-sims, stimulating fake-market share but are reducing average operator’s ARPUs)
This unfair market share is because of the market is under a declared war for the acquisition of gross adds and SIM-penetrated market share, making Zain and Sudani to prefer spreading the market with SIMs and offer air-time for free better that focusing in market share of billed traffic. Zain and Sudani have already decided their growth strategy towards volume and quantity, positioning Zain as a high value brand, MTN as a top international player and Sudani leveraging on its status of the ‘national operator’
On top of this, a huge competition in the commercial areas (specifically in the pricing area, where the huge discounted plans and tariff are destrying current market’s value, and in the sales areas, where the huge channel commissions given by Zain and Sudani are making of the Sudanesse, a extremely competitive market).
