VODAFONE LOST SOME 101,000 mobile customers in the year to December 2014, or 278 customers daily.
The figures were published as part of the company’s quarterly interim management statement.
As at 31 December 2014 the company had 2,048,000 mobile customers in Ireland, a 5% decrease from the previous year’s figure of 2,149,000.
Of this total 54.3% are prepaid customers, a decrease of 4.9% from 2013 and a full 10.3% since December 2012.
Intuitively this suggests that prepaid customers are the biggest migrants from Vodafone deals over the last two years.
It is naturally enough significantly easier for a prepaid customer to switch provider at any time.
With 45.7% of customers still tied to bill contracts, the obvious implication is that as these contracts mature the Irish market could get significantly worse for Vodafone before it gets better.
Irish customer losses for the global giant are not a new story with some 153,000 mobile clients fleeing the coop since the end of 2012.
While Vodafone would not comment on the reasons for the losses (and with their current share standing at 46% relative to the Irish population they can hardly be described as doing too badly), the ongoing prevalence of next generation 4G mobile browsing probably has a deal to do with the losses.
Vodafone’s chief rivals in the Irish market – Meteor, 3 Ireland and Tesco Mobile – are all offering 15GB of data (4G is extremely data hungry) for less than €50 per month. At present the best offer Vodafone list online is 7GB for €80 per month, a stark contrast in value.
It was not all bad news for the provider however – their fixed line broadband service saw an increase of 20,000 subscribers in 2014 to 215,000.
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