(LiveMint)
Prima facie, telecom sector incumbents Bharti Airtel Ltd, Vodafone India Ltd and Idea Cellular Ltd have done well to protect market share despite Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd’s relentless aggression. Subscription numbers released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) show that the Vodafone-Idea combine improved their share of active subscribers from 39% in March 2017 to 40.2% in January 2018. Airtel did even better, increasing its share by 470 basis points to 30.9%.
Reliance Jio increased its share by 580 basis points, which, of course, represents a much faster growth, given its low base. Its share in March stood at 7.8%. Each of these large companies gained at the expense of smaller firms. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.But holding on to subscriber market share, or even improving upon it, doesn’t count for much in a world where tariffs are declining. What really matters is the wallet share each telecom firm enjoys with customers who use more than one mobile connection.
