China Mobile, Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Telefonica and Vodafone are the top 5 telecom operators based on their second quarter financial result in 2013, said ABI Research.
The top 5 mobile carriers represent 49 percent of total gross profit generated by the 50 largest mobile carriers tracked by ABI Research.
The remaining 5 telecom operators include NTT DoCoMo, China Telecom, France Telecom Group, VimpleCom and KDDI, said ABI Research. There are no Indian companies in this list.
While China Mobile is the most profitable mobile carrier in aggregate, quarterly gross profit per subscriber is only $16.40, placing the carrier in 48th place. Verizon Wireless is 4th with $71.80 and AT&T 5th with $60.40.
While China Mobile’s profit per subscriber is substantially lower than Verizon Wireless’ and AT&T’s, there are signs that China Mobile will continue to extend its lead over the other carriers.
As the proportion of revenue from 3G, and then 4G mobile data services increases, this will boost China Mobile’s overall profitability.
Verizon and AT&T have been able to boost revenues by targeting, consumer 4G services, enterprise and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) services. For example, Verizon is focusing on certifying new M2M solutions for use on its wireless network through partner program in healthcare IT industry, while AT&T has introduced home security and automation services.
In the second quarter, China Mobile’s quarterly gross profit grew 2.1 percent compared to Verizon Wireless’ 1 percent and AT&T’s 0.2 percent.
Another effective strategy to boosting profitability is converting prepaid subscribers to postpaid. Mobile operators are beefing up their postpaid smartphone devices portfolio, introducing postpaid centric applications and offering multi-device shared plans to entice prepaid subscribers to make the conversion.
