Hundreds of millions of dollars reach the accounts of the mobile telephony operators in Romania every year. The top two players on this market, Connex and Orange had come to total more than 5.3 million clients by the end of June alone. This figure could very well go beyond 6 million on December 31 and total revenues in this business should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of one billion dollars by yearend. Who and what is behind these huge figures? A good strategy above all, but also the dealers and retailers of mobile phones, accessories and services.
Who are the dealers? You have certainly heard of Germanos, GlobalNET, Goldstern, CG&GC or Euro GSM, you have passed by one of their stores at least once and you may have bought a phone or a handsfree set over there.
There are a great deal other players, as well, which are smaller and usually operating locally. All in all, the market of mobile phone dealers and retailers is very fragmented and extremely competitive. Whereas no one has ever counted how many companies are involved in this business, the market observers say none of them accounts for more than 10%.
Out of the total annual sales of mobile phones and accessories that amount to $150 million (some sources say it is actually about $100 million, while optimists say it is about some $200 million or even more), Germanos claims the leading position due to its approximately 10% market share. Very close behind are, as market analysts say Euro GSM with 6%-7% market share, Avenir Telecom (formerly known as GlobalNET) and Goldstern, each of which accounting for 4%-5%.
Analysts say about 1.3-1.5 million mobile phones are sold in Romania every year.
Handset sales structure shows low-end models make up 65-75% of the total sales, middle-end phones account for 20%, while expensive high-performance phones account for 10-15%, according to Constantin Lucescu, managing director of HAT Romania, the sole distributor of the Samsung phones on the Romanian market.
Opinions vary depending on whom you ask when it comes to mobile phone replacement rate in Romania. Liviu Nistoran says only 7-8% of the mobile phone owners decide to replace their handsets every year, while Lucescu feels it is actually about 35-40% and this phenomenon supposedly pushes overall sales up high.
Barring handsets and accessories, the telecom dealers are also making good money from selling mobile telephony services, i.e. prepaid cards and subscriptions. "Some $80 million are made from selling post-paid services and $120 million from pre-paid services every year," Liviu Nistoran, former general manager of GlobalNET and currently head of communications solutions provider NetCom, estimates.
A simple calculation shows the Romanian distributors of mobile phones, accessories and services make about $350 million a year. iuliana.susanu@zf.ro
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