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Mobile phone use doubles in just one year

The number of mobile phone users in Taiwan has more than doubled since last year: at the end of November Taiwan had roughly 10.3 million users, up from 5 million at the beginning of the year, government statistics show.

According to the Directorate of General Telecommunications under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) (交通部電信總局), just two years after private mobile phone operators began operating here, the number of mobile phone users has increased nearly 636 percent from 1.4 million in 1997 to 10.3 million as of this November.

The penetration rate of mobile phone users in Taiwan jumped from 7 percent in 1997 to 47 percent this year.

Although the DGT declined to reveal the number of subscribers of each mobile phone service operator in order to protect corporate privacy, Pacific Communications Services (台灣大哥大) announced on Dec. 6 that it now has three million subscribers and a 29 percent market share. The number is very close to state-run Chung-hwa Telecom Co's (中華電信) 3.37 million. Pacific Communications projects that it will register NT$24 billion in revenues this year and profits of NT$9 billion.

Commencing operations in January 1998, it took Pacific Communications only 11 months to amass its first million users, and 20 months to reach two million in August 1999.

KG Telecommunications (和信電) also announced in early December that its number of subscribers had reached 1.9 million by the end of November, accounting for 18 percent of the market. The company said it made a NT$400 million profit in the first half of this year and it expects a NT$1 billion profit this year.

Far EasTone Telecommunications Co, Ltd (遠傳電信) said that the number of its "effective revenue producing customers," excluding the number of users canceling their services and having yet to use their pre-paid mobile phone cards, has now reached 1.72 million. The company said that it doubted the credibility of user numbers released by other mobile phone service providers, claiming that several market research studies done by the company showed that the actual number of mobile phone users in Taiwan has yet to "exceed 10 million."

Far EasTone projects its sales this year to be NT$20 billion, double last year's NT$7.5 billion. The company also said it will start realizing a profit this year. Far Eas-Tone registered a loss of NT$600 million in 1998 but the company registered NT$8.84 billion sales and NT$1.25 billion pre-tax profit for the first half of this year.

TransAsia Telecommunications (泛亞電信) said it had 50,000 users at the end of November while Mobitai Communications (東信電) said it had 40,000 subscribers. TransAsia said it registered NT$3.92 billion in revenues from January to September and turned a profit of NT$400 million. The company now hopes for NT$5 billion in revenues and NT$600 million in profit for this year. Mobitai projects its revenues at NT$3.5 billion and profits of NT$200 million.
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