Riding On 4G, Election Year Demand Surge, Airtel And Jio Set To Overtake Vodafone-Idea In Revenue Market Share In 2019

Bharti Airtel and Reliance Infocomm can displace Vodafone-Idea, the current market leader with respect to Revenue Market Share (RMS) by 2019-end, ET Telecom reports.

Industry experts and analysts believe that the shift will happen since Vodafone-Idea will focus on integrating their vast companies and their networks while Airtel and Jio run on their superior 4G networks.

Further, the report adds that the concept of more data consumption in an election year and chasing profitable customers will help the telecom industry in India to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU).

In 2019, there will be pricing stability among telecos since Jio, which has nearly 27 per cent of RMS, will not lure customers as it did for the past two years. However, the Cellular Operations Associations of India (COAI) is expecting intense competition and the APRU pressure bath to continue growing in 2019.

Nitin Soni, director (Corporate), Fitch Ratings says, “Airtel and Jio could end up holding roughly 33 per cent RMS each by 2019-end, while Vodafone-Idea could drop below 30 per cent by 2019-end from its near 33 per cent level now, as the latter is likely to face network integration challenges and not be in a position to offer 4G services comparable with either Jio or Airtel”.

According to regulator’s data, Airtel’s RMS at September end was 30.9 per cent (343.5 million users), down by 0.75 per cent points (75 basis points) from the previous quarter and Jio gained by 375 bps to reach 26.1 per cent (over 252 million users). Vodafone-Idea Limited (VIL) decreased by 90 bps and stand at 32.8 per cent (437.5 million subscribers).

Soni expects the trend to continue in the October-December quarter as well. The report also adds the importance of 2019 general elections in stirring data consumption, induce shifting from feature phones to 4G, increase in ARPU, leading the rise in revenue year-on-year.