What? How can a penetration rate be greater than 100%? It turns out that, when it comes to mobile, a high penetration of subscribers does not necessarily translate into a high penetration of users. Which means that, in Latin America, where subscriber penetration is currently already at 109%, there’s plenty of room for even more growth.
Vinicius Caetano, Senior Analyst for Pyramid Research, explains: “The reason behind the high penetration in Latin America lies on the pre-paid segment that often requires no minimum permanence contract; that makes it easier for users who want to change providers without cancelling the current subscription and for users that want to benefit from lower prices to have multiple subscriptions with different providers,” he explains. “Therefore, a high penetration of subscribers does not translate into a high penetration of actual users.”
Caetano, who will be presenting more research at the Rio Wireless Conference next month, says that Pyramid Research expects the region to achieve 130 percent penetration by the end of 2015. “This provides an opportunity for service providers to focus on customer retention programs, strategies aimed at moving subscriptions from prepaid to postpaid, and the introduction of new services and applications that can be sold to existing subscribers.”
What are you doing to make sure your brand is connecting with mobile subscribers in this fast-growing market?
