Telstra experienced a decline in mobile phone market share for the quarter ending June 30, but still remains well ahead of other competitors.
The telco held 39.5% of the total mobile phone market according to data published by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, down from 41.8% a year ago.
Its prepaid offering took the biggest hit, falling from 42.0% during the quarter ending June 2016 to 36.6% a year later. The decline for Telstra’s postpaid plans was less prominent, falling from 41.8% to 41.0%.
Optus saw its overall share increase from 21.8% to 24.2%, and Vodafone and Virgin experienced decline to currently hold 14.4% and 4.4% of the market, respectively.
“Customer churn from Telstra to Optus is noticed, with consumers leaving Telstra due to the desire for ‘cheaper calls/SMS’,” Kantar’s Tamsin Timpson said.
‘Better network coverage’ was found to be the top reason to join Optus, whose customers are also reportedly the biggest users of music streaming services like Spotify and video streaming services like Netflix, Stan and Fetch TV.
Amaysim/Vaya saw modest growth during the quarter, up from 4.5% a year ago to 4.7%. Aldi’s market share was also up, from 2.2% to 3%, while TPG/iiNet dropped from 2.8% to 2.3% and Boost remained steady at 0.7%
Data from Kantar covering all the other mobile virtual network operators not otherwise mentioned indicated market share growth from 5.5% to 6.9%.
