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  • Business - Market Data
  • Updated: August 19, 2020

Data War: Airtel Loses To Glo, As Over 160,000 Subscribers Leave 9mobile

Data War: Airtel Loses To Glo, As Over 160,000 Subscribers L

The competition in the telecommunications market in Nigeria has gotten more intense, most especially between Airtel and local network provider, Globacom. Both companies have been on each other's jugular for months, but Airtel Nigeria has now lost to Glo, while 9mobile has been struggling to stop its subscribers from porting to other networks.

Battle In The Telephony/Voice Subscriber Market

In an industry deep dive by AllNews, it was gathered that 9mobile continued to lose subscribers - and this has become a culture in the company. In one month, 9mobile lost over 114,000 subscribers, after its subscriber base declined from 12.22 million to 12.11 million in June. Note that 9mobile also lost 342,000 subscribers between April ending and May.

During the same period of June, which 9mobile lost a significant number of its subscribers, Airtel Nigeria recorded a boost in its subscriber base after it increased from 51.49 million of May to end the month of June with 52.46 million; this represented an addition of over 966,000 subscribers - more than the over 237,000 subscribers Airtel gained in May.

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Globacom kept its position as the network provider with the second-highest voice subscriber after it gathered over 516,000 subscribers to reach 52.57 million in June, from the 52 million it ended May with. This shows Glo surpassed the over 218,000 subscribers it recorded in May.

Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria maintained its grip over the market, extending its subscriber base beyond the reach of 9mobile, Airtel, and Globacom. In the month of June, MTN Nigeria gained the highest subscribers with over 2.73 million subscribers connecting to the voice service of MTN Nigeria, as the 'Yello' subscriber base grew from 76 million to hit 78.75 million. This is higher than the over 1.3 million subscribers it recorded in May.

This cemented MTN Nigeria's position in the voice market, 40.17% of the market share, while Glo comes next with 26.82% share, while Airtel Nigeria is a little shy of Glo, accounting for 26.76% of the market share, and 9mobile has the lowest share of the market, accounting for 6.18% - taking the total voice subscribers in the industry to 196 million.

Data War Among MTN, Glo, Airtel, 9mobile

While MTN Nigeria has moved clear of its rivals, the data war is still very much alive as Airtel and Glo have been spending big on advertising and marketing of their data. Both Glo and Airtel have been running media commercials promoting slogans such as Data is Oxygen and Data is life respectively.

But Glo's commercial effort seemed to have paid off in June, as the Wale Adenuga company surpassed Bharti Airtel's Nigerian subsidiary. Within one month, Glo gained over 734,700 subscribers to top Airtel, as its data subscriber base grew from May's 37.23 million to 37.97 million in June.

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Airtel was only able to gather over 248,700 subscribers in June, thereby, falling short of the needed figures to maintain its lead over Glo. AllNews gathered that Airtel Nigeria's data subscribers hit 37.56 million in June, from the 37.31 million it closed May with. This placed Airtel Nigeria third on ranking behind Glo.

Glo had lost its second position to Airtel in May, after Airtel peaked at 37.31 million, while Glo ended the month of May with 37.23 million despite gaining (1.3 million) more subscribers than Airtel in the same month. Airtel could only manage over 448,000 subscribers in May.

Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria continues to dominate the market, increasing its data subscriber base from 58.86 million to 60,60 million in June. The telecoms company gained the highest data subscribers in June, after recording 1.74 million. In May, MTN Nigeria added 882,000 subscribers to its data subscriber base.

As expected based on its previous months' performance, 9mobile lost more data subscribers in June, after over 160,900 subscribers stopped using the company's data service. AllNews gathered that 9mobile couldn't hold the 7.25 million data subscribers of May, as the figure declined to 7 million in June. This brings the total number of data subscribers in the telecoms industry to 143.3 million.

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