At present, we can easily feel a fierce competition in Indian telecom sector and it has affected even to incumbents in this segment. Just at the beginning of this month, the country’s largest mobile operator–Bharti-Airtel–reported 9 straight quarterly falls in the profits till the end of Q1 of the fiscal 2012-13. Despite, it has recorded 1.1% jump in its revenue market share for the quarter ended June 2012. As per a recent report, Bharti Airtel accounted 30.3% of the industry’s total revenue market share for the quarter ended June 2012, up from 29.2% of the previous quarter. On the other hand, Vodafone and Idea Cellular accounted 22.7% and 15% of the industry’s total revenue market share respectively in quarter ended June of this year.
Bharti’s revenue market share (RMS) dropped from 33.8% in Q1 of the fiscal 2009-10 to 29.2% in the Q4 2011-12, while Vodafone and Idea Cellular grew up their revenue market share by 200% and 280% respectively during the same period. Idea Cellular succeeded to grow up its subscriber base in Q3 and Q4 of the last year, while Vodafone sustains the pace of subscribers addition. At present, Airtel is primarily concentrating on 3G services and that’s why, it has lowered it 3G tariffs across the country.
In the Mumbai Circle, Bharti Airtel’s RMS surged to 19.81% in Q1 of FY 2012-13 from 18.46% in the same quarter a year back. However, its RMS marginally declined in Delhi circle to 36.16% in the quarter ended June 2012 from 36.17% in the same quarter of the last year, while its RMS fell in Chennai and Kolkata Circles to 31.69% and 26.77% in the quarter ended June 2012 from 31.81% and 27.01% in June 2011 respectively.
On the other hand, GSM operators like Vodafone and Idea Cellular reported rise in their ‘Revenue Market Share’ across major metros . It’s true that the competition in the metros are quite higher compare to the other portion of the country, but these are key revenue generating service areas for telecom vendors.
It seems from Bharti’s recent activities that it’s very aggressive on subscribers’ addition and the company is making higher investment in its sales and marketing campaigns across the country. However, Bharti Airtel has endeavored to grow its consumers data base by decreasing its tariffs, but at present, its efforts are not seem so effective.
