KARACHI, Oct 30: The cellular subscriber base in the country witnessed a slow growth in the second quarter, which stood at 2.4 per cent by September 2008, as experts see mobile phone consumers’ market touching the saturation level.

Though the cellular subscriber base crossed 90 million mark by the end of September 2008, figurers compiled by the telecom regulators and cellular companies suggest that the sales of new connections are on the decline for the last few months compared with previous years, as rising inflation has also seriously affected the purchasing power of consumers.

“As we go through figures, total new connections added in August stood at 238,000 while in September they were recorded at 640,000,” said a telecom industry source, citing fresh data.

August and September are the two lowest registered sale months of new connections since monthly reporting began in 2005 by the companies and naturally it directly depends on people’s needs and their strength to acquire that. “We have witnessed both on the decline for the last few months,” said the source.

Blocking of unregistered SIMs (subscriber identity modules) by all cellular companies in line with the directives of the Pakistan Telecom Authorities (PTA) following recommendations of the law enforcement agencies, also resulted in recent decline to some extent, observed the source.

A phenomenal jump in the number of cellphone subscribers has been witnessed since 2004, when two foreign cellular service providers launched their operations in the country.

It triggered a competition which led to an increase in the number mobile phone users to more than 90 million across the country by September 2008.

The PTA data shows that Mobilink leads the market share with nearly 31.35 million subscribers across the country, followed by Ufone with 18.8 million users. Telenor enjoys a total of 18.47 million subscribers, while 16.15 million people use Warid. China Mobile’s Zong attracted some 5.09 million subscribers by September 2008, says the PTA data. The source said big players of country’s cellular industry suffered major consumer loss for the recent decline in growth rate while a few managed to attract new subscribers on low tariff offer. However, experts believe the recent decline in the country’s cellular subscriber base would definitely hit companies’ revenue, but is not likely to affect their business plan.

“This should not be considered as a major setback for cellular companies in Pakistan,” said Saad bin Ahmed, head of research at Capital One Equities.

“There are issues, which are needed to be considered while analysing cellular business potential in the country and obviously fast approaching saturation of mobile phone subscribers is one of them.”

He also cited recent blocking of unregistered SIMs by the companies as one of the reasons behind decline in overall growth rate.