MVNO Market Growing

LONDON -- New research available from www.MVNODirectory.com has found that the MVNO market in Western Europe has grown by more than 60% in two years. Europe is the largest active market for MVNOs with over 150 active operations within the continent; ranging from SIM card only consumer focused operations to enterprise data operations. The Western Europe MVNO market now makes up 10% of the mobile customer services base and is quoted as equating to 30 million subscribers.

The MVNO phenomenon is part of the growth logic in mature mobile markets and is helping to stimulate growth in emerging ones. New growth outlets are required to develop the non mainstream customers as is the case in Western Europe and North America, where large areas still remain to be conquered. The development path open to MVNOs depends a great deal on context and on a market's technological and regulatory situation. In some cases, mobile virtual network operators are being backed by regulators; such as in Spain, with regulator CMT, who see them as a means of boosting competition in the mobile sector. The study also looks into how the MVNO phenomenon is playing out against a backdrop of network convergence and adoption of value-added services.

A new mobile landscape is taking shape, populated by generalist operators, chiefly MNOs, and by speciality operators positioned in increasingly targeted customer segments, but which nonetheless still depend on MNOs. Existing MVNOs have taken one of two approaches: Low-cost MVNO playing the price card, at the cost of fragile profits; Niche MVNO working to attract overlooked or poorly served customer niches - the real challenge there being to generate ARPU from existing customers with tailor-made offers.

This research has been drawn from a new study titled, 'MVNO - The New Deal'. Case studies from Europe, North America and Asia, have been used to deliver an in-depth examination of the MVNO phenomenon. Strategic analysis combined with growth scenarios up to 2011 are used to provide understanding of the impact that these new players are having on the entire value chain.

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