Ministry of Information and Communication has lately released that up to the end of 2009, there were about 130 million telephone subscribers in Vietnam, in which the mobile subscribers were estimated at 110 million ones, much higher than the country's population of 86 million people. The three large mobile service providers of Viettel, MobiFone and VinaPhone reported to have nearly 100 million subscribers, and the rest were of S-Fone, Vietnamobile, Beeline and EVN Telecom.
The ministry also admitted that the imaginary subscribers counted for about 50 percent. It is difficult to calculate the exact number of mobile subscribers and Sim-card owners because one customer can use many Sim cards at the same time. However, it's estimated that there are over 30 million people who haven't accessed mobile services yet and about 75 percent or over 20 million people would use mobile phones.
As for the target of developing new mobile subscribers of three key mobile services providers: In 2009 each provider developed 10 million new subscribers at least, in which Viettel reached 16 million new subscribers. However, this year, the three large telecommunication groups reduced the targeted amount of new subscribers by half, in which Viettel planned to develop additional 7 million ones, while MobiFone and VinaPhone of 5 million subscribers each.
Vietnamobile reported to reach four million subscribers in 2009 and it's expected to develop 5 million new subscribers within this year. Therefore, excluding S-Fone and Beeline, on the basic of statistics provided by four above-mentioned providers, the amount of targeted new subscribers would be 22 million ones. In fact, it is considered a harsh competition among the mobile service providers, as they would concentrate on launching promotion programmes to attract customers of other network.
The country's mobile market in 2010 would be the race among the providers to attract the remaining subscribers of low-income customers. Therefore, the providers predicted that revenue gained from those subscribers would stay at low level. However, it's still considered an opportunity for the providers to affirm their positions in the mobile market before the market reached the saturation point in 2011. At that time, the mobile services providers would enter the new competition of keeping the customers not to change their mobile network. Apart from improving the quality of mobile network and services, the providers would introduce attractive mobile charge reduction and promotion programmes. In such races, the large mobile network providers will surely have more advantages than the small ones.
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