India_Mobile_Swot_Analysis

Strengths Mobile subscriber growth continues to be strong The market benefits from a healthy degree of competition The mobile market plays host to a large number of strategic investors including Singapore’s SingTel, Vodafone of the UK, Telekom Malaysia, Norway’s Telenor, Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and Russia’s Sistema Regulatory framework is generally seen as having helped to facilitate competition and an attractive business environment for telecoms sector investors; government continues to loosen the restrictions on foreign participation in telecoms market Demand for mobile value added services is strong and expected to grow Weaknesses Mobile market is still highly skewed towards prepaid users; inactivity levels are thought to be high The dominance of prepaid services has contributed to declining mobile average revenue per user (ARPU) levels Disagreements between the telecoms regulator and various government ministries has led to delayed policy implementation in a number of areas, most notably in 3G licensing Despite major ongoing investments, mobile network infrastructures in rural areas remain limited Opportunities The regulator has recommended that foreign operators should be allowed to participate in the upcoming auction for 3G spectrum without a local partner The government is currently considering recommendations made by the country’s telecoms regulator to allow the operation of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) in the mobile market The government will cut licence fees by up to 33% for those operators whose services cover over 95% of the residential areas in a circle Deployment of next generation network (NGN) infrastructures and the launch of new multimedia mobile handsets should have a positive impact on data service usage All of the leading operators have been actively deploying multimedia content services, providing opportunities for content providers The proportion of prepaid users relative to postpaid subscribers remains high – this provides the operators with opportunities to migrate prepaid users to contract tariffs Threats Danger that current slowdown in domestic consumption will impact negatively on mobile market Uncertainty as to whether spectrum allocations for 3G services will be sufficient; severe lack of spectrum in nine of the 22 calling circles Government plans to increase spectrum usage charges for telcos planning to offer 3G services could negatively affect the 3G licensing process Network capacity, particularly in mobile market, could struggle to keep up with demand Mobile number portability (MNP) will make migration between operators easier, thus adding pressure on operators to retain existing customers