Original title: Mobile lost 2.42 million 4G users! Employee: kill king card to stop bleeding
In 2017, the number of 4G users in China has reached 1.05 billion, and the market has been saturated. The competition of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom in the 4G market has also shifted from expansion to the scramble of stock users.
Recently, the three major operators released their operation data for April this year. Surprisingly, the number of 4G users of China Mobile has declined. This decline is not only the first time in the history of China Mobile, but also has never been encountered by China Unicom and China Telecom.
There must be a reason for the decline in the number of mobile 4G users. Although we entered the 4G era for a long time, users make complaints about 2 or 3 G traffic per month, but China Mobile's 5 yuan /30M traffic package still exists for a long time, and it is sped up by netizens.
China Mobile's 4G users drop for the first time
On May 21, the three major telecom operators successively released their operation data for April. Among them, the number of 4G users of China Mobile decreased for the first time! According to the business data released by China Mobile in April 2018, the number of 4G customers decreased slightly by 0.36% compared with March to 669 million, with a loss of 2.427 million.
This is not only the first time that China Mobile has encountered the monthly loss of 4G users, but also the first time that three operators have encountered it. Even China Unicom lost 12.44 million mobile users in 2015, but in terms of 3G / 4G users, it increased by 34.745 million.
In 2014, China Mobile added about 8.06 million 4G users per month.
In 2015 and 2016, the growth of 4G users of China Mobile ushered in a peak period, with an average monthly net increase of 18.5 million in 2015 and an average monthly net increase of 18.58 million in 2016. Especially in December 2016, China Mobile had a net increase of 25.205 million 4G users in a single month, the highest net increase of 4G users by three operators in a single month.
By 2017, the growth pace of China Mobile's 4G users began to slow down, and the monthly average net growth level had dropped to 9.539 million. In 2018, the growth pace of China Mobile's 4G users further slowed down. In the first quarter of 2018, China Mobile had a net increase of 22.24 million 4G users, with an average monthly net increase of 7.413 million.
By April 2018, China Mobile had lost 4G users.
At the same time, the number of 4G users of the other two operators is growing in the same period. In April this year,
China Telecom added 5.86 million 4G users, with a total number of 206.12 million users, and a net increase of 24.08 million 4G users in that year;
China Unicom's 4G users increased by 4.062 million, reaching 198 million.
According to the data released by the Ministry of industry and information technology in April, the total number of 4G users in China has reached 1.05 billion, regardless of the situation that a user has multiple numbers. According to surging news reports, an industry observer pointed out that with the increasing saturation of the total number of 4G users, the competition in the 4G market is more and more like a zero sum game, which can only rob customers from others, and it is more and more difficult to win.
As for China Mobile's next response to the decline of 4G new users, people from China Mobile Group have not responded to the daily economic news (wechat: nbdnews) by the end of the press release.
Mobile employees: price war may intensify
Some analysts believe that the loss of 4G users of China Mobile is not unexpected
First, 4G penetration is getting higher and higher, and the growth space has been significantly reduced;
Secondly, the fast migration of 2G / 3G users to 4G users has been basically completed, and the subsequent migration process will be slower and the migration cost will be higher. (relevant data show that by the end of March this year, the penetration rates of 4G users of China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom were 74.76%, 75.48% and 66.07% respectively, but this is a common problem faced by all operators. )
Finally, in the competition for users, China Telecom and China Unicom are becoming more and more aggressive. The popularity of unlimited traffic packages, more preferential prices, and the popularity of Internet cards all make China Mobile feel the pressure.
4G market tends to be saturated, in order to compete for users, operators have made a big deal in unlimited traffic packages.
First of all, let's look at China Mobile's "let me use" nationwide unlimited packages: three packages priced at 88 yuan, 128 yuan and 238 yuan, corresponding to 10GB, 20GB and 40Gb respectively, beyond which the speed limit will be imposed; voice calls are often 50 minutes, 150 minutes and 500 minutes respectively.
And China Unicom's' ice cream series' unlimited traffic package, in which the monthly fee of xiaobingshenka is 99 yuan, will be limited after reaching 20GB, and the call time is 300 minutes. The monthly fee of Dabing shenka is 199 yuan, and the speed limit starts when it reaches 40Gb, and the call time is unlimited.
The "Daniel card" launched by China telecom costs only 49 yuan per month and has 100 minutes of voice calls. When the mobile Internet traffic reached 10g, the speed limit began.
The biggest killer of China Unicom is the "king card" launched in cooperation with Tencent.
According to wall street news reports, among the three major operators of China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile, China Unicom's performance is relatively weak. Because of this, since the outbreak of mobile Internet, China Unicom has reached commercial cooperation with many well-known Otts (providing various application services to users through the Internet). For example, wechat and wechat jointly launched 'wechat Woka' in 2013 to provide wechat with preferential directional traffic and other exclusive services, which is the only one of the three major operators.
At present, China Unicom has cooperated with Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, etc. at the business level to jointly customize SIM cards with bat: it has jointly issued big and small king cards with Tencent, ant treasure cards and Ali cards with Alibaba, and big and small God cards with Baidu. Among them, according to the 2016 annual general meeting of shareholders of China Unicom, Tencent's wangka and xiaowangka have increased 20 million users in half a year, and the cooperation with Alibaba has also brought 3 million users, contributing about 70% of the new share to China Unicom.
At the same time, wechat has recently reserved a port for Tencent wangka. With the help of wechat's 900 million daily users, the growth of 20 million users may be just a starting point.
A mobile insider in southern China told the daily economic news that as the world's largest 4G communication operator, China Mobile's network is a major advantage. China Mobile's 4G network coverage far exceeds that of other operators, which directly determines the user's call and Internet experience. Insiders also told reporters that in the next step, China Mobile is bound to increase the package promotion discount, and the price war between operators will be further intensified. "It's mainly about cracking down on the king card. If you kill the king card, you can stop the decline.".
Home broadband service is expected to surpass Telecom
Although in the 4G market, but China Mobile is in the field of broadband for their own place. In terms of wired broadband, according to the latest statistics, the data of the three major operators are also changing
China Mobile had a net increase of 3.178 million customers in April, with a cumulative net increase of 14.411 million and 127 million in this year.
In April, China Telecom had a net increase of 1 million customers, with a cumulative net increase of 4.76 million and 138 million customers this year.
China Unicom added 253000 customers in April, totaling 78.31 million.
Fu Liang, an insider in the industry, predicted that the number of broadband users of China Mobile may reach or exceed that of China Telecom from August to September this year, c114 communications network reported. In order to stay on the throne, China Telecom proposes to increase its broadband share by 25% annually in 2018 and is working hard for it.
Due to the lower broadband charges than the competitors, China Mobile's home broadband business has maintained a high growth in the past two years. In 2017, the net increase of home broadband customers was 34.95 million, accounting for 75.6% of the new market of the three major operators, and the total number of broadband users exceeded 109 million. The number of broadband users of China Telecom was 134 million at the end of the same period.
On March 22, China Mobile released its annual performance in 2017. Shang Bing, chairman of China Mobile, said at the performance conference that in the early stage of entering the broadband market, China Mobile's price was indeed lower than the industry level, and this year's development goal was 21 million households. Now the penetration rate of domestic household fixed broadband market is about 65%, and there is still room for growth.