Globe undisputed leader in postpaid with revenue market share of 57.8%

Globe Telecom has emerged as the No. 1 postpaid brand in the country based on revenue market share, the global metric used in determining market leadership across telcos worldwide.

The Ayala-Singtel partnership telco posted postpaid revenues of P7.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, drowning out Smart’s P3.3-billion postpaid revenues and Sun’s P2.4 billion.

Globe postpaid revenues have grown by 11 percent versus Sun’s 10 percent from previous year’s levels.

The revenue figures for the first quarter show that Globe has cornered the bulk of the mobile postpaid segment with a revenue market share of 57.8 percent, making it the undisputed leader in the global metric for telcos.

Smart accounted for a 24.6-percent revenue share, while Sun had a 17.6-percent revenue share in the postpaid segment.

Globe Senior Advisor for Consumer Business Dan Horan pointed out that Globe has been consistently growing its postpaid business both in number of customers and Arpu (average revenue per user), an important indicator of customer preference and stickiness to the network.

“Clearly, mobile postpaid is a segment that Globe has long dominated [for] many years. Since 2012, Globe led the mobile postpaid business with a consistent revenue market share of 58 percent on a two-player market,” he said.

“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,” he added.

Earlier, Globe launched a new postpaid plan, dubbed myLifestyle Plan, which allowed it to corner much of the market in the postpaid segment.

The myLifestyle Plan resulted in a big jump in Globe’s postpaid revenue share, with telco analysts saying that it addressed the digital concerns of the subscribers by providing access to what Globe has termed as the Filipino digital lifestyle.

The plan allowed customers to fully embrace the digital experience with data and exciting content using mobile phones.

According to Erli Valdez, Globe vice president for postpaid business, “the myLifestyle Plan was a significant growth driver of postpaid revenues and customer base in the first quarter of 2015 as it perfectly caters to our customers’ digital lifestyles.”

“With the myLifestyle Plan, they get a postpaid plan made for the way they live today, giving them a full smartphone experience with focus on data usage. The myLifestyle Plan is set to become an invaluable life tool to allow our customers to enjoy a world of digital content that is built the way they live now,” Valdez added.

The new myLifestyle Plan gives customers access to an easier and simplified plan offer starting at P499 a month, which comes with built-in unlimited calls and texts to Globe & TM, plus freebies such as free one-month choice of Navigation, Explore or Fitness Pack, free one-month Gadget Care, and free 1GB Globe Cloud storage for 24 months.

On top of the base P499/month plan, Globe postpaid customers can avail themselves of add-on services, like Surf Packs for their mobile Internet needs, which are bundled with exclusive access to Spotify and/or NBA League Pass. Customers can choose from GoSURF99 for 100MB of mobile internet monthly to as much as 15GB monthly with GoSURF2499.

For a richer data experience, myLifestyle plan customers can also choose from any of the Lifestyle Packs, which includes Chat, Fitness, Navigation, Explore, Photo, Shopping and Work, as well as access to Facebook, HOOQ, NBA, Spotify and Twitter. Moreover, they can also get extra calls and texts to other networks, as well as landline and international services with the Classic Packs.

All promo packs chosen will then be added to the P499 base plan, which will be equivalent to the customer’s monthly service fee (MSF). Customers then get to choose from a wide range of free devices and gadgets, depending on their MSF. The more services they add on top of the base plan, the better the handset they can get.

Also, by adding P99 on top of the base plan, customers can get free smartphones with their postpaid plan ranging from CloudFone, Huawei, Lenovo and Samsung to Microsoft Lumia devices.

The company has been leading the drive toward positioning the country as the “Digital Lifestyle Capital of the World” through fast and easy data access, as well as highly affordable content and apps.

This was noted in a story carried by highly influential American online news aggregator Huffington Post, and titled “Philippines: A Digital Lifestyle Capital in the Making?” The article talks about the local digital lifestyle landscape, which it defines as “one’s reality powered by apps, sites, and gadgets that compliment one’s physical lifestyle.”

“Mobile operators, along with local mobile phone brands, drive smartphone and mobile internet penetration in the Philippines. Globe Telecom, the leading network for smartphones covering data traffic of 87,000 terabytes with an increase of 270 percent year-on-year [compared to its main competitor, PLDT Group’s 48,000 terabytes of data with 167-percent growth] has strongly influenced the digital lifestyle of Filipinos,” it stated.

As of March 2015, Globe mobile-data revenues significantly grew by 58 percent from the previous year’s P2.8 billion and by 8 percent from previous quarter’s P4.1 billion. Meanwhile, combined mobile Internet revenues of Smart and Sun rose by 19 percent to P2.2 billion from P1.9 billion in the same three months of last year.

Propelling the growth of the company’s mobile-data business were its partnerships with global content providers, such as Google, Facebook, Viber, Spotify, NBA, HOOQ and WhatsApp to enrich the customer experience.

“The surge in mobile-data services was spurred by the impact of our data-adoption strategies from the Free Facebook and Free Viber campaigns, as well as the growing smartphone and mobile browsing adoption among Globe customers. This also reflects on the phenomenal growth of our mobile data business, which, in turn, secures our position as the purveyor of the Filipino digital lifestyle,” Horan said.

“We believe that this is the most appropriate path for us to meet the changing needs of our customers as the world of data becomes more pervasive in their lives. With the growing adoption to more connected devices, Globe expects its mobile-data business to create deep revenue streams for the company in both the near- and long-term period,” he added.

For instance, the Philippines became one of Facebook’s first successful test beds for the concept of free Facebook through the relationship with Globe in 2013.

The service, which was initially offered for three months, paved the way for Globe to double its mobile data user base and increase its mobile browsing and other data revenues by 42 percent by end-2013, as compared to the previous year.

Likewise, Spotify, the world’s most popular music streaming service, reveals that the Philippines is its second fastest-growing market globally, as well as its biggest market in the Asia-Pacific region.