Connecting India

Mobile phone companies will have to think of some new strategies to increase their flagging sales. The fall in GSM-based cellular subscribers growth continued with just 979,000 additions in May 2004 at 28.1 million. On the other hand, the CDMA technology based mobile subscriber base of private operators touched 7.72 million during May this year, adding 307,000 customers over the previous month.

THE WINNERS
Industry Number One Bharti Group cornered over 26.08 per cent of the market at 73.43 lakh customers. Hutch was number two with a base of 55.91 lakh and a slightly increased marketshare of 19.86 per cent. BSNL ended May with a subscriber base of 55.27 lakh taking its marketshare to 19.63 per cent.

THE CDMA KING
Reliance Infocomm, which operates its CDMA telephony services across 20 circles including Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Maharashtra hiked its total subscriber base to 7.6 million in May against 7.2 million in April. As on May-end, Tata Teleservices’ base stood at 1.8 million users.

43.18 million Fixed Lines 36.3 million Mobile Phones

THE BIGGEST LOSER
One wonders what is the cellular phone strategy of MTNL, which operates only in Delhi and Mumbai. While consumer base of late private players entrants to Mumbai like Airtel shot up by huge margins, consumers find it difficult to get an MTNL SIM card. No wonder, MTNL ended May with a static marketshare of just 1.41 per cent with a subscriber base of 396,000.