Bharti Airtel, Reliance Industries and Vodafone Idea shares were little changed in the morning trading on April 2 after the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) data showed muted subscriber additions in January.
Reliance Jio led the market with 41.8 lakh mobile subscriber addition in January, followed by Bharti Airtel’s 7.52 lakh. Vodafone Idea lost 15.2 lakh wireless subscribers, the data showed.
“We expect continued market share gains in favour of Bharti Airtel or Reliance Jio as 5G becomes mainstream. However, Jio’s underperformance on active subscriber additions needs to be monitored,” they said.
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While Reliance Jio remained at the peak position, its active market share gains were flat on a month-on-month (MoM) basis at 40.5 percent. On the contrary, Bharti Airtel’s active market share increased by 30 basis points (bps) to 36.3 percent. However, Vodafone Idea lost its active market share by 20 bps MoM to 18.6 percent.
ALSO READ: Jio cements market lead with 41.8 lakh mobile subscriber addition in January: TRAI data
Overall, the telecom industry’s gross subscriber addition was healthy at 23 lakh in January, led by Jio and Bharti. The industry’s rural subscriber base grew by 17 lakh MoM, as against 16 lakh in December.
On the mobile broadband front, Bharti Airtel gained its fair share of net adds at 24 lakh in January 2024, while Vodafone Idea lost 5 lakh subscribers in January 2024. On the other hand, India’s fixed broadband (FBB) subscribers have more than doubled over the past four years.
JioFiber FBB’s net additions accelerated to 2.5 lakh (36 percent year-on-year (YoY), slightly higher than the 2.3 lakh monthly average in FYTD2024). Bharti Airtel added 1.1 lakh subscribers.
Analysts at Kotak Institutional Equities believe that R-Jio and Bharti continued to gain wireless user market share at Vodafone Idea’s expense. “In our base case (status quo on Vodafone Idea or Vi, moderate tariff hikes), despite a likely fundraising for Vi, we expect market share gains for Bharti and R-Jio to continue at Vi’s expense, especially among premium subscribers, driven by pan-India 5G rollouts, and network coverage gap on 4G,” they said.
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