QCOM is down! Maybe here is why.
12-05-98 Growth of mobile phone mart slows
By Nam In-soo Staff reporter
While subscriptions to local call services have increased slightly, the growth in mobile phone users is showing a slowdown, which analysts say is evidence that the mobile service market is nearing a saturation point. According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, the mobile communication service industry has recorded fast growth, achieving the landmark 10 million subscription at the end of June. Subscriptions to the nation's five mobile service operators have since maintained steady increases.
In July, 528,944 new subscribers joined one of the five mobile services. Monthly new subscriptions grew to 603,186 in August, 856,398 in September and 872,608 in October. But the growth in the number of new subscribers dropped to 418,849 in November, bringing the total number of subscriptions to 13.45 million. It marks the first slowdown in subscriptions since Korea's mobile telecom services went into full swing. By company, the number of subscribers of SK Telecom, the largest mobile carrier, recorded a monthly increase of 78,589 people to 5.8 million, capturing 43.1 percent of the mobile service market at the end of November.
The meager growth can be attributed to the decrease in the number of analog subscribers by as many as 60,744 people. Shinsegi Telecomm, which only offers digital cellular service, saw its subscriptions decline by 24,454 people to 2.06 million for 15.4 percent of the market. A company official said the decrease is largely caused by the fact that Shinsegi canceled services to delinquent subscribers. But the three personal communications services (PCS) carriers ? KT Freetel, LG Telecom and Hansol PCS ? maintained robust growth with a monthly increase of about 10,000 people each. Analysts said the slowdown in mobile subscriptions is an initial sign that the mobile communication service industry is reaching a saturation point.
Meanwhile, the subscribers of the fixed-line services showed continued growth. According to a Korea Telecom report, wired services subscriptions reached 20.3 million people as of the end of November, up 16,000 from the previous month. The increase followed an increase of 11,000 subscribers during the September-October period. Korea Telecom said considering the growing demand for high-speed data communications, the fixed-line market will continue to expand.
|
