Second quarter service revenues increased mainly due to seasonal effects, while the year on year drop was mainly due to cuts in mobile termination rates. The drop in voice revenue of EUR 110 million of the last 12 months was partly compensated by the EUR 89 million increases in non-voice revenue.
Vodafone and T-Mobile remain the dominant players on the German market with more than 70% of the total service revenues over the last two years, despite considerable efforts of E-Plus and O2. Nevertheless, E-Plus was the only operator to show an increase year on year, mainly in the prepaid segment, helping to increase its market share by 1.2%, to 15% of revenues.
Compared to same period last year, Vodafone’s share of revenues declined only half a percentage point to 35.5%, while T-Mobile also dropped 0.5% to 35.3%. O2 dropped to fourth place with a 0.2% to 14.2% market share.
In terms of mobile subscribers, the German market increased by almost 3.5 million in the quarter, to a total 103.4 million customers. Market penetration rose to 125.9% at the end of June, from 121.6% at the end of the first quarter 2008.
T-Mobile and Vodafone remained market leaders with 37.1% and 34.1% market share respectively. Together they lost 1.2% market share to the other operators. E-Plus increased its third place position, reaching a market share of 15.6%. O2 obtained 13.1% market share in the second quarter of 2008.
Based on results of previous quarters, Telecompaper expects the market to remain flat or to show a small decline in revenue at the end of this year. Alejandra van de Roer , Telecompaper senior research analyst, said: “German operators need to focus more on value added services to compensate for decline in voice revenues. Reductions in roaming prices and mobile termination rates will keep voice revenues under pressure this year.”