Brazil’s mobile market profile (Brazil)Brazil’s mobile market is the fifth largest in the world, in terms of subscribers. Although Brazil holds almost one third of all the mobile users in Latin America, its mobile penetration is lower than the regional average. Brazil is lagging behind the rest of the region in SMS traffic, with text messages cost more than any other Latin American country. Number portability is to be implemented by March 2009. A 3G-spectrum auction in December 2007 was a huge success, and 2008 has been marked by 3G rollouts throughout the country with almost all operators – except for the market leader, Vivo – offering UMTS services.
A sale of 2.6 million mobile phones took place last month, Brazil reached 133.15 million mobile subscribers at the end of June’08, or 1.99% more than in May’08. The mobile penetration rate currently stands at 69.52 percent.
Brazil’s four major mobile operators, Vivo, TIM, Claro, and Oi, together hold about 91% of the market. Eight Brazilian mobile operators, Vivo, TIM Brasil, Claro, Oi, Brasil Telecom, Sercomtel, Nextel, and CTBC Telecom Celular, are reportedly functioning together to develop and launch IM services nationwide. Under the service the subscribers can exchange messages with users on each other’s network.
Vivo, Brazil’s number one mobile operator by subscribers, posted a net loss of BRL59.5 million (USD38 million) in the three months to end-June, EBITDA rose 16% from BRL756 million to BRL879 million . The subscriber base grew to 40.4 million subscribers, up by 19.4%, 7.7 million are post-paid and the remaining 32.7 pre-paid. Vivo leads with 30.36% market share this June.
Brasil Telecom earned a revenue of US$ 1.75 Billion, up by 2.9% in Q2′08, EBITDA reached US$ 0.70Billion (BRL 1.13 billion), up 16.4% BrT Movel registered 5 million mobile subscribers at the end of the period, up by 33.1% Brasil Telecom’s investments were estimated at US$ 509.8million (BRL 812.4 million), up by 168.5% versus last year, the reason being the 3G license acquisition and implementation of the new network.
Oi shows revenues up by 8.7%. Drop in Net profit, 46.8% to BRL 249 million, Mobile ARPU has improved to BRL 22.0 from BRL 21.3 in the first quarter, while churn increased to 6.8%.
