Are operators focusing in profitability instead of growth in this new cellular stage in Brazil?
Brazilian cellular market in Brazil started the second semester of 2012 in a phase of smaller growth in which carriers seem to change focus seeking for market share in order to increase profitability through the growth of the average Revenue per User (ARPU).
This change in reflected in an increase of ARPU at Vivo, TIM and Claro in 4Q12.
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In fact, since Jul/12, postpaid net adds in are bigger when compared with prepaid.
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In this period, postpaid accumulated net adds of 5 million, against in 1.9 million prepaid.
Vivo led postpaid growth in this period holding net adds of 2 million.
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Claro was placed in the 4th position, but is increasing its participation (share) in these net adds, being the second in Feb/13.
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The situation is more complex in prepaid due to the many base cleanings promoted by operators. By having a base with a smaller number of inactive accesses, the carrier improves indicators such as ARPU and MOU (minutes of use) and makes paying Anatel's fiscalization fees (Fistel).
Vivo's negative net adds gotten in postpaid, for example, can be mostly attributed to the reduction of the time to turn off inactive mobile accesses to 60 days. According to the operator, if the company adopted a rule similar to TIM's (180 days) it would have +7.8 million cellulars in Dec/12. In Feb/13, TIM was the market share leader in prepaid with an advantage of 3.2 million subscribers over Vivo.
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Claro is the only operator to show significative growth inside this segment over the previous months. The carrier leads month net adds since Sep/12 and in Feb/13 it presented net adds of 403 thousand prepaid, against 32 thousand registered by TIM, 4 thousand gotten by Oi and -107 thousand by Vivo.
Prepaid performance has been responsible for assuring the net adds leadership to Claro in the last three months.
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