THE cellular unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) continued to outpace its competitor in the postpaid space of the mobile-services market, a trend that will likely continue in the months to come, a company executive claimed on Monday.
Sun Vice President Joel S. Lumanlan said his company’s growth in the postpaid segment of the market outpaced the second-largest telecommunications firm in the Philippines, booking an 18-percent rise in subscriber base to 1.81 million in the first quarter of the year, from 1.54 million the year prior.
Globe Telecom Inc., meanwhile, saw its mobile postpaid-subscriber base increasing by 9 percent to 2.27 million in the first three months of 2015, from 2.09 million last year.
“Sun’s stellar performance in the postpaid segment has been hugely driven by feature-packed plans that give subscribers unbeatable value for their money,” Lumanlan said.
He said the company is bullish that the growth will be sustained in the next few months.
“We are very confident that Sun will sustain this momentum of double-digit growth and outpace its direct competitor as we roll out highly competitive products that appeal to the wise spender in every Filipino. Sun’s strategy has always been simple: Empower Filipinos with a much better choice for their mobile services,” the Sun executive said.
He added: “We should be able to sustain that and be able to grab market leadership by the end of this year.”
Sun also launched on Monday its new postpaid-acquisition strategy, dubbed as the “Choose Better” campaign. Lumanlan said the initiative aims to encourage “mobile users to rethink their options, cut through all the fluff and settle for the choice that offers the better value.”
Under the campaign, Sun is pushing Sun Best Value Plan 450, an entry-level postpaid plan that already comes with a free Android phone plus a monthly pack of unlimited Sun calls and texts; 20 hours of mobile surfing; free Facebook; and 250 texts to other networks. Sun also offers broadband users with Nonstop Surf Plan 450, which provides nonstop surfing; additional 1 gigabyte (GB) data for data streaming; and another 1GB music streaming on the Spinnr app.
As part of its aggressive campaign, Sun is also boosting its prepaid offers like Super Loaded Call and Text Unlimited 100, which features unlimited calls to Sun, Smart and Talk ’N Text; unlimited texts to all networks; and 100 megabytes data now valid for seven days, and its prepaid broadband pack Nonstop Surf 25, which now includes 50MB data for light online activities; 25MB data allowance for heavy online activities’ and 300MB worth of content Spinnr, valid for one day.
In 2014 Sun emerged as the fastest-growing postpaid brand in the country after posting a remarkable 16-percent year-on-year growth in terms of subscriber base, compared to the 12-percent growth posted by Globe over the same period.
Globe rebuts
GLOBE Senior Advisor for Consumer Business Dan Horan noted, however, that his company cornered 57.8 percent of the postpaid market in terms of revenues.
“Clearly, mobile postpaid is a segment that Globe has long dominated over many years. Since 2012 Globe led the mobile postpaid business with a consistent revenue-market share of 58 percent on a two-player market. Our leadership in the postpaid business is clearly unprecedented, underpinned by sustained growth in this segment and our breakthrough offers and innovations attracting new customers,” Horan said.
He said the company posted postpaid revenues of P7.8 billion in the first quarter of 2015 versus Smart’s P3.3 billion and Sun’s P2.4 billion. Globe postpaid revenues have grown by 11 percent versus Sun’s 10-percent growth from previous year’s levels.
PLDT posted an 11-percent growth in postpaid revenues to P5.7 billion.
Napoleon L. Nazareno, president of the country’s top telecom player, earlier said his company remains unfazed by being outpaced by its competitor in terms of revenue growth.
“The subscribers are, of course, very important and the revenues will follow after that,” he said in a March 18 interview.