Mobile: A noticeable slowdown in market growth across North Africa, especially in Algeria and Morocco

[officialwire] The end of 2008 saw a noticeable slowdown in mobile markets across North Africa, but most especially in Algeria and Morocco. In Algeria, Algérie Télécom experienced an unfortunate end of year in its mobile business, actually losing subscribers in the final quarter. In Morocco, the downturn was not as dramatic, but it still made the end of year subscriber totals distinctly unimpressive. It would be easy to say that this slow down is in reaction to the global economic situation and that it is set to continue. However, BMI expects things to pick up again during 2009 and suspects that practical considerations like the cancellation of unregistered or inactive SIMs had as much to do with the slowdown as falling consumer confidence.

As a result of lower than expected end of year figures, we have revised our mobile forecasts for Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. As already mentioned, we do expect growth to pick up again, at least a little, although, thanks to maturing markets, it is expected to slowdown gradually in terms of a long-term trend.

Despite our prediction of a return to our projected long-term growth path for all three markets, the forecasts are nonetheless lower than previously, thanks to the low totals at the end of the year as a starting point.

Morocco has seen the official licensing of Wana as the country’s third GSM mobile operator. Wana was already successful in offering fixed-wireless and semi mobile services over its CDMA network, and it is expected to make a success of a GSM venture, despite the challengingly mature market. Kuwait’s Zain has also taken a minority stake in the company, providing it presumably with some helpful investment and good experience of rolling out GSM networks.

In Algeria the much-anticipated privatisation of Algérie Télécom was at first delayed for two to three years pending modernisation works, and then completely called off, in a move that will no doubt frustrate potential investors, such as Saudi Telecom Company, which had been eagerly awaiting news of a tender.

Tunisia, like Morocco, will be seeing more competition, as the telecoms market is finally to see more liberalisation with the licensing of new fixed and mobile operators. This has been expected for some time, since Tunisia has generally had a fairly liberalising stance in other sectors, and telecoms appeared to be lagging behind. It is hoped that the privatisation of Tunisie Telecom will follow.

The End Of 2008 Saw A Noticeable Slowdown In Mobile Markets Across North Africa