Vodafone gains market share as Telstra drops
Vodafone is the big winner in the local mobile market over the last 12 months.
Vodafone has long had the reputation as the perennial bronze amongst Australian mobile network terms, thanks in no small part to the long ago Vodafail debacle, but it appears that its aggressive stance on pricing is paying dividends with Australian consumers.
According to Roy Morgan Research, Vodafone has grabbed significant market share from rivals Optus and Telstra over the last 12 months. For mobiles used by Australians over 14 years of age, Vodafone now has a 19.4% share, up 0.9% from the same time a year ago. Telstra still has a commanding position with 39.1% of the market, but that does represent a 0.1% drop. Possibly its multiple outages earlier in the year didn’t help. On the Optus side of the fence, it can claim 24.4%, a 0.5% drop.
That leaves the rest of the mobile market to be carved up by Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs). As a category MVNOs were down, notably Virgin (down 0.1% to 4.4%), amaysim (down 0.1ppt to 3.0%) and TPG/iiNet (down 0.3ppts to 3.0%). Boost and ALDImobile did end up with slightly larger shares of the MVNO pie, however, jumping 0.3% for Boost up to 1.4% and 0.2% up for ALDImobile up to 1.1%.
Here is how the market share for each provider has changed over the last 12 months:
| Mobile Market Share | All consumer mobile | Consumer post-paid mobile | Consumer pre-paid mobile | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provider | Oct-15 | Oct-16 | Oct-15 | Oct-16 | Oct-15 | Oct-16 |
| Telstra | 39.2% | 39.1% | 42.2% | 42.0% | 33.6% | 33.8% |
| Optus | 24.9% | 24.4% | 24.2% | 24.2% | 36.3% | 24.6% |
| Vodafone | 18.5% | 19.4% | 20.5% | 21.3% | 14.8% | 16.1% |
| Virgin | 4.5% | 4.4% | 5.2% | 5.1% | 3.2% | 3.1% |
| TPG/iiNet Group | 3.3% | 3.0% | 2.2% | 2.1% | 5.3% | 4.6% |
| amaysim | 3.1% | 3.0% | 1.8% | 1.6% | 5.6% | 5.4% |
| Boost | 1.1% | 1.4% | N/A | N/A | 3.2% | 3.8% |
| ALDImobile | 0.9% | 1.1% | N/A | N/A | 2.5% | 3.2% |
| Other | 4.5% | 4.2% | 4.0% | 3.7% | 5.3% | 5.2% |
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