Aussies are turning away from phone contracts and towards low-cost SIM-only alternatives, with Aldi Mobile and amaysim scoring valuable market share from the big four telcos.
Market share estimates collected by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, show small dips for the major players and correlating increases for their wholesale customers. Taken as a whole, the MVNOs have enjoyed a 2.4% increase in subscribers over the past 12-months.
Aldi Mobile and amaysim have taken the lion’s share of the gains, with amaysim up to 3.7-percent of the market, and Aldi up to 1.1-percent. With the entire Australian mobile market at about 25-million subscriptions, amaysim should have approx 925,000 subscribers and Aldi Mobile is up to 275,000.
But with a a mobile market as saturated as Australia, gains in one segment come at the expense of another. Telstra and Optus both lost an estimated 0.2-percent market share, Virgin Mobile just 0.1-percent, while Vodafone was affected most with a 2-percent dip.
The Kantar Worldpanel figures are estimates only, with the data collected from 120,000 customer surveys.
MVNO: please explain
The acronym MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator and signifies a business who resells mobile phone services under their own brand. In Australia we have 3 network owner-operators; Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, so all other telco brands fit under the MVNO banner.
Put simply, an MVNO purchases services (calls, SMS and data) from the network owners at wholesale rates. They then create their own plans and on-sell these services to customers, like you and me.
The rise in popularity of the MVNOs comes from the comparably low price they charge for these services. As smaller businesses, MVNO will often spend much less money on marketing and advertising, and most don’t sell subsidised handsets, so they can afford to construct cheaper plans with higher inclusion value.
Joseph Hanlon
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