تصدی و سهم بازار در شبکه های مخابراتی تلفن همراه اروپا

The structure of mobile telecommunication markets varies considerably across Europe, ranging from monopolies with a handful of subscribers to markets with five operators and many millions of subscribers. Where competitive markets occur, there is also an incumbent operator possessing substantial first mover advantages. This paper explores these advantages, asking whether the incumbent has remained the largest operator as the market has developed. This question is investigated using data from 49 European countries. The analysis finds that in most countries the incumbent continues to be the largest operator measured by market share. In some countries, later entrants into the market have struggled to gain market share, contributing to the highly concentrated nature of many mobile markets. The extent to which the geographical footprint of an operator influences its market share is also examined.

Throughout the world, most countries have liberalised their telecommunications markets. As a result, competition has been introduced into markets with all that this entails. As a consequence of this competition, new technologies and services have been developed, prices have fallen and mobile telecommunications have reached an ever-larger share of the population. Although these benefits have been, and remain, significant, the development of competition in mobile markets has taken longer than many expected, with the first operator to launch often retaining a significant portion of the market long after it has been joined by two or three other operators. While there are several reasons why incumbents have continued to dominate mobile markets, it has been argued that they posses significant first-mover advantages that later entrants have found difficult to overturn (Bijwaard et al., 2008 and Whalley and Curwen, 2006). Given these advantages and the well-documented difficulties that some later entrants have experienced, an interesting question to ask is in how many markets is the incumbent still the largest mobile telecommunication operator? In contrast to previous research that has relied on a small sample size (for example, Bijwaard et al., 2008) or sought to explain developments within a single country (for example, Liu, Chou, Wu, & Shih, 2009), this article asks whether the incumbent mobile operator is still the largest across 49 countries in a broadly defined Europe. With this in mind, the remainder of this article is structured as follows. In the following section, the relevant literature in two areas is discussed. The first of these areas identifies the advantages associated with being a first-mover in general, whereas the second examines previous research relating to first-mover advantages within the telecommunications industry. In Section 3, the sample and methodology adopted is outlined while in Section 4 the analysis is undertaken. The analysis is divided into two parts, covering firstly whether incumbents have remained the largest operator in their respective markets and, secondly, whether it is possible to discern any market share benefits from operating in contiguous markets. Conclusions are drawn in Section 5, and areas for future research are suggested.

This paper has focused on incumbents within the mobile markets of a broadly defined Europe. From the literature review presented in Section 2 it is possible to identify a range of first-mover advantages that help the incumbent mobile operator maintain its position as the largest operator in the market once it has been liberalised. The paper has shown, in Section 4, that in many European markets, the incumbent remains the largest operator, suggesting that there are significant first-mover advantages in mobile markets. With this in mind, the first observation that can be made is that recent entrants have found it difficult to enter and then thrive in mobile markets in Europe. One possible explanation for this could be that mobile markets are highly concentrated, with the two largest mobile operators often controlling between them substantially more than half of the market. The division of the remainder of the market between the other mobile operators in the market impinges on their competitiveness, through, for instance, limiting their ability to enjoy scale economies. This should not be interpreted as implying that the dominant position of the incumbent mobile operator cannot be overturned as there are sufficient examples across Europe that illustrate that this is possible. One reason why the market position of incumbents has been overturned is that they did not migrate to successor technologies such as 2G that offered operators advantages over those using 1G. While the transition from 1G to 2G mobile technologies provided an opportunity for later entrants to overturn the leading position of incumbent operators in the market, this did not occur with the transition from 2G to 3G. Through leveraging their subscriber base and delaying their own migration to 3G, existing 2G mobile operators were able to withstand the competitive pressures that 3G-based new entrants such as Hutchison brought about. In those countries where 3G-only new entrants have launched, they are the smallest operator in the market. In other words, the advantages derived from 3G have, to date, proved insufficient to overcome those arising from an installed 2G subscriber base. A second observation is that the use of multiple brands by operators highlights the fragmented nature of the European mobile market. No operator is present in all of the European countries surveyed, although Vodafone comes the closest when its direct investments are combined with its 24 partner network agreements. Deutsche Telekom has focused its attention on two regions—Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, adopting a single brand in most countries. However, its minority stake in OTE is insufficient to enable Deutsche Telekom to impose the T-Mobile brand in the Balkans. The other operators that have built contiguous footprints for themselves, such as Telekom Austria and TeliaSonera, do not use a single brand in all their markets. The adoption of multiple brands by these two operators would suggest that the advantages associated with a single brand are not as clear as first imagined, with the use of a brand familiar within the national context being more important. The internationalisation that has occurred within the mobile telecommunications industry is reflected in the regional focus of some operators and the use of a common brand in more than a single market. Internationalisation enables operators to transfer learning between markets so that their competitiveness is enhanced as well as to enjoy scale economies in areas such as the purchase of handsets, while consumers benefit from a more competitive market and the ability to roam on preferential terms or access services outside of their home market. However, the manner in which internationalisation and its associated benefits influence the growth of operators in specific markets remains largely unclear. While Ibbott (2007) has explored how Vodafone has sought to integrate its various national subsidiaries, this is a relatively unusual. As it is not clear how, in practice, internationalisation has influenced the competitiveness of operators and thus enabled them to prosper, further research is required in this area. One aspect of this future research could be to determine how learning is transferred between national markets so that competitiveness is enhanced, while a second is whether the use of common brands improves the amount of revenue generated through roaming between national markets. This paper also suggests that further work is required in two areas. Firstly, there are benefits to be gained from engaging in comparative studies. By comparing the structure of mobile markets with that of other industries that share similar characteristics such as limited entry opportunities through licensing, successive generations of technologies or the need for large capital expenditure, it would be possible to ascertain how typical its concentrated nature actually is. If the other industries display a market structure where companies are more equally sized, regulatory action of some sort is required. Conversely, if these other industries are similarly structured, the case for regulatory intervention is diminished. Secondly, further work is required to create databases that enable trends within European mobile markets to be discerned. While the cross-checking of Curwen and Whalley, 2004 and Curwen and Whalley, 2008 with Global Mobile did increase the robustness of the database, additional work is required to ensure consistency and reliability. Only once this has been achieved can more sophisticated techniques be employed to explore the relationship between the incumbent and its position in the market. At the same time, additional variables need to be included in the analysis. One such variable would be the financial performance of the mobile operator. Although a variety of measures such as operating income and average revenue per user (ARPU) are available, two significant obstacles will need to be overcome: ensuring consistency between years and operators to enable meaningful comparisons to be made and ensuring that data are collected for more than just a handful of years. The financial performance of a mobile operator reflects the strategy that it has adopted, with enhanced profits indicating that the strategy has maintained or enhanced its competitiveness vis-à-vis other operators in the market. However, it does not shed light on whether the strategy was to focus on business or residential users or on pre-paid instead of post-paid users. Thus, another variable that could also be included in future research is the strategy that has been adopted by the mobile operator. This could take the form of an events analysis that identifies, for example, changes in strategy and then maps them onto market share and financial performance. A third set of variables for inclusion relates to the marketing activities undertaken by mobile operators. The analysis could include how much the mobile operator spends on marketing, or the impact that adopting a new brand or exclusively distributing a handset has on market share. Regulatory measures could also be included. One such measure would be whether mobile number portability has been introduced in a particular market, as its presence would encourage churn between operators through the reduction of switching costs. A second regulatory measure that could be included is the extent to which mobile termination rates have been reduced, with reductions encouraging operators to devise new strategies to retain and attract customers.