Spain: Mobile revenues down by 12% in a semester
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010Spanish mobile market like the country’s other economic sectors has been navigating in a storm during the last semester to March 2010 when some key performance indicators turned red. Thus, both subscriptions to mobile services and revenue generated by operators proved to be disappointing as featured it well the chart below based on Dataxis Intelligence recent updates.
As a matter of fact, Spanish mobile market revenues tumbled at just over €3.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010 down 4% sequentially and 12% on a semester basis while the decrease on an yearly basis exceeded 5%.
In the same time of period the market performed better in terms of subscriptions though the tendency in the last three quarters was stagnation at around 54 million users after a tiny 1% increase registered in mid-2009.
So how the drop in revenues may be explained as it outpaced the decrease in subscriber base? The answer may certainly be found by looking at the other indicator that affects revenues: the monthly Arpu (Average Revenue per User). In fact according to figures provided by Dataxis Intelligence, the mobile Arpu in Spain decreased by 15% in the semester to March 2010 to a 2-year record low level of €24 after having grown by 3% and 4% respectively in the second and third quarter of 2009.
