Malaysian Mobile Subscribers Expected To Climb 10% By Year-End With A Forecasted Growth Up To 4%, Says IDC

Kuala Lumpur, October 22 – Based on "IDC's Asia/Pacific Semiannual Mobile Voice, Data and Multimedia Services Tracker" (Doc# IDC_P5954 ), the projected Malaysian mobile subscribers will reach the 26 million mark at the end of year 2008 with a mobile subscriber penetration rate of 93% of the Malaysian population.

Over the next five years, IDC anticipates that the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for total mobile subscribers in Malaysia will grow by 4% from 2008-2012. Prepaid users will continue to dominate the mobile subscriber market share despite efforts by mobile operators to convert prepaid users to postpaid users.

“In the past, subscriber acquisition was one of the key indicators in measuring mobile operators' performance in Malaysia. This will no longer be the benchmark due to the high market saturation level”, said Chua Fong Yang, Associate Market Analyst, Telecommunication Research, IDC Malaysia. “In the next few quarters, mobile operators are expected to be more aggressive in launching innovative postpaid contracts and prepaid packages to gain subscribers loyalty and to avoid churn.”

The launch of nationwide Mobile Number Portability (MNP) this October will also provide another challenge for mobile operators to retain their subscribers. However, IDC believes that MNP will have minimum impact on the Malaysian mobile market. An IDC survey, "Malaysia Mobile Services Customer Churn and Loyalty Survey" (Doc# MY202111P) conducted last year indicated only 11.7% of subscribers expressed interest in switching to another mobile operator when the MNP is implemented.

With a market penetration of 93%, mobile operators are facing increasing pressure to grow their revenues over the next few years. Mobile operators must avoid competing on reducing per minute voice tariffs which would further dilute the overall mobile operator ARPU. Instead, mobile operators should introduce voice and data bundling for prepaid and postpaid subscription plans to increase revenue and encourage data usage among mobile subscribers.

“Most mobile users are skeptical of using mobile data services because of the perception that data services are expensive. By bundling voice and data together in the mobile plans, mobile subscribers will be more inclined to increase data usage and data services adoption,” added Fong Yang.

For more information about this research, "IDC's Asia/Pacific Semiannual Mobile Voice, Data and Multimedia Services Tracker" (Doc# IDC_P5954 ), kindly contact Elizabeth Shunmugam at +603-2169-7536 or eshunmugam@idc.com, or Belinda Yap at +603-2169-7521 or byap@idc.com.

-ENDS

Malaysia Mobile Services Customer Churn and Loyalty Survey (Doc# MY202111P, 2007)

This IDC study represents the findings of the IDC Malaysia Mobile Churn and Loyalty Survey, 2007. The result of this research includes key loyalty factors and the potential impact of Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

"Malaysia mobile users are largely satisfied with their current service providers (SPs), and this is reflected in the high percentage of loyal subscribers, largely attributed to their high general satisfaction levels with their current SPs. As such, MNP will have minimal impact on the mobile market, whereby only 11.7% of subscribers will switch to a competing SP following the implementation of MNP in 2008, " says Lincoln Lee, research manager, Telecommunications Research and Consulting, IDC Malaysia.

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