Stuttgart, Germany — Spain telecom market is set to continue to decline in the next coming years according to InfoCom’s latest released figures on the Spanish market through TELESEEQ. From well above the €28,6 billion in 2008, the Spanish telecom market tumbled to €27,5 billion in 2009, and is expected to continue falling to €27 billion by the end of 2010. The telecom industry is expected to continue to fall in 2011, with some very mild signs of recovery probably in the second half of 2012, as a result of falling fixed and mobile markets.
In a virtually saturated mobile market, the mobile sector continues to experience subscriber losses in the last quarters, as operators continued to discount inactive SIMs. While the market will touch down to its minimum in 2010 — shrinking another 3% — the beneficial effect of the increasing number of subscribers with 3G-enabled handsets should be visible from 2011, where the total market value is expected to increase again slightly (+1%). InfoCom revised its forecasts to the year 2015 as 3G connections were around 47% at end 1Q10.
Mobile broadband connections were just less than 2mn at the end of 1Q10, about 3.5% of the total subscriber base. The mobile broadband market in Spain develops slowly compared to the European average, where 3G datacards and USB modems penetration per household is at over 13%, growing over 5% YoY, against a Spanish penetration of about 11%, slugging growing at about 3% YoY. In Spain, driving up ARPUs through mobile broadband and mobile data services usage could result in a mounting effort as economic factors will continue to play a relevant role, holding back users from upgrading to more expensive mobile services. In the meantime, Spain’s Industry ministry has revealed plans to expand the access to broadband mobile networks through the distribution of additional frequencies to mobile Internet providers. The move will allow more spectrum for mobile Internet applications and support growth for laptop data cards and smartphones that use “higher margin” applications like mapping services, music and video.
While the fixed Internet market, driven by broadband, is showing growth rates of over 5% on 2009; and the datacom market is expected to be slightly growing at just above 2% (YoY), fixed telephony is incessantly falling, losing 4% in 2010 (YoY). While the fixed line market will continue to struggle, InfoCom believes that the decline will decelerate slightly as operators develop successful bundle strategies to promote broadband services through fixed networks. In particular, alternative operators have benefitted most from this strategy, luring subscribers away from incumbent Telefónica, which has “lost” over 1 million fixed lines, about 8% of its total access line base (1Q10, Y0Y).
About this contribution: InfoCom has just released 2010 evaluations and 2015 updated market shares for a number of countries. New figures and data are available in Teleseeq, InfoCom’s interactive dataroom, available online. Teleseeq is ONE system comprised of the entire telecommunications and related markets with data available for a huge number of services, with split a large number of indicators, by region, country and carrier, for 85 countries and 10 regions.
About InfoCom: InfoCom is a market research and consultancy company with over 20 years experience providing strategic analyses and planning assistance to stakeholders in the telecommunications, IT and multimedia industries. InfoCom’s independent and fact-based analyses highlight trends and opportunities, supporting decision makers to understand market dynamics in order to improve their competitive advantage.
