The Dutch mobile industry achieved EUR 6.28 billion in service revenues in 2010, down 0.5 percent from 2009. That compares to annual growth of 0.9 percent in 2009. While the economic slowdown did not have a major impact on spending, the market was under pressure mainly from regulatory price cuts in 2010, according to market researcher Telecompaper. The annual decline in 2010 was mainly due to the large drop in voice revenue, which was not compensated fully by the growth in non-voice revenues. Non-voice services now contribute over 32 percent of total service revenue. For the fourth quarter, mobile service revenues showed a sequential decrease of 0.9 percent to EUR 1.55 billion and were down 1.3 percent from the year-earlier period.
Telecompaper forecasts the Dutch market to show a slight growth of 0.5 percent in 2011, to just over EUR 6.3 billion in service revenue. For the period 2010-2015, the Dutch market is expected to show a CAGR of 1.6 percent, reaching around EUR 6.8 billion in 2015. Cuts to mobile terminations rates will continue to dampen results in 2011 and 2012, offset by growth in data services.
The report shows that only Vodafone was able to post annual revenue growth, of 6.1 percent in 2010. In contrast, T-Mobile showed a drop in total service revenue of 3.0 percent, and KPN’s revenues fell by 2.9 percent. In terms of number of subscribers, KPN saw its market leader position go down slightly, to 49 percent of all subscribers, while Vodafone increased its market share to more than 27 percent thanks to strong subscriber growth, and T-Mobile was relatively stable at 24 percent of all subscribers. The total number of subscribers saw a drop of 2.3 percent annually to just below 20.0 million at the end of 2010, led by a 10.8 percent decline in prepaid customers. Mobile market penetration dropped from 123.5 percent in Q4 2009 to 120.0 percent in Q4 2009.
