Nigeria’s telephone service market is throwing up an interesting dynamism with the four major operators pushing for more market shares.
What is apparent is that MTN Nigeria maintains leadership in both total number of subscribers base and data subscriptions numbers, Airtel and Glo split second position in data and total subscriber numbers respectively
The telephone service report recently released by the Nigerian Communications Commission indicates that Airtel lost more than 100,000 subscribers in Nigeria between December 2019 and January 2020.
This was not however the case with it’s rivals –MTN Nigeria and Globacom, which on their parts recorded growth in their total number of their respective active subscribers. According to the report, Airtel Nigeria accounted for 49.9 million subscribers in January 2020, a slight decline compared to the 50.1 million it had in December last year.
Meanwhile, the fourth major telephony company 9mobile appears to have given on competition as it is far behind in the fray.
The company, which was formerly known as Etisalat, has been losing its subscribers since a recent change in ownership led to a brand name change. Despite being behind, it has continued to lose both in subscription and data supply. It lost a whopping 484,000 in subscriber base in January alone.
9mobile had 13.6 million subscribers in December. That number now stands at 13.1 million. The last time the network provider surpassed 15 million active subscribers was in May last year.
It’s woes may continue for sometimes to come as it doubtful it can source the kind of funds it would require to put it in effective challenge to others in the now mature Nigerian telephony market.
According to the NCC report, Globacom’s subscriber base increased by 55,509 to hit 51.75 million in January, up from 51.70 million in December 2019. It is believed that the surge in Globacom’s subscribers has been its aggressive marketing which has helped it to secure 27.85% of the market share.
On its part, MTN Nigeria has continued to maintain its position as the leader in the Nigerian telecoms industry. The company was the biggest gainer in the month of January, having added 1.93 million subscribers to its already existing 68.7 million subscribers as of December. This has, therefore, increased MTN’s total active subscribers to 70.6 million in January 2020.
This means the Y’ellow firm account for 38.06% of the market share. Altogether, the industry recorded an increase from 184.4 million telephone subscribers in December to 185.7 million subscribers in January 2020.
For data, Globacom is not doing so well despite is massive market support to its products and its offer of generous data rates. The trouble, according to our findings, is that its data offerings are short in customers satisfactions.
Airtel Nigeria’s data subscribers increased to 35.5 million in January from 34.5 million.
Globacom was behind with 29.2 million subscribers , although this is an increase compared to the 28.9 million it recorded in December 2019.
The difference between Airtel and Globacom in the total number of data subscriber is network service for browsing.
In data arena, MTN Nigeria is still the leader. MTN Nigeria’s subscribers increased to 55 million in January from 54 million in December.
But while MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, and Globacom experienced a surge in their subscriber base, 9mobile keep declining. The company’s total data subscriber base dropped from 8.06 million in December to 8.04 million in January.
Industry pundits believe that the battle for supremacy especially in the data arena is going to be more intense in the coming months as the operators strive to harvest market share in a segment where most Nigeria’s spend most of the telephone expenditures.
Incidentally, this an area where all the operators still have a lot to do as complaints are still rife about their services, such poor network strength at some periods of the day, outright loss data credit, etc.
