Orange: The market shrank by 300m euros in 2010

Romania's mobile telephony operators in 2010 lost 300m euros in revenues against 2009 amid recession, VAT hike, the austerity moves and the first fall in history in the number of users, according to the data included in the annual report of France Telecom, the owner of Orange Romania, the biggest telecom operator domestically.

Orange maintained it led in 2010 in terms of the net number of new subscribers, owning to the new tariff plans launched in 2009. Orange maintains it registered a net number of 78,000 new subscribers in 2010, against 34,000 in the case of Vodafone and a 32,000 loss for Cosmote.

On the other hand, according to the same report, last year it was only rivals Vodafone and RCS&RDS that expanded their market shares, calculated in terms of the number of clients. Orange leads with a 36.7% share, down from 37.5% a year before. The company ended 2010 with 10.464 million clients, from 10.995 in 2009.

As regards targets for 2011, Orange states they entail retaining the market share in terms of value, leading further in terms of the battle for post-paid clients and boosting revenues from business clients and from prepay card clients, hit hard by recession.