TORONTO – In a company-wide memo leaked to the popular Canadian wireless blog Mobile Syrup, Public Mobile CEO Alek Krstajic outlined his company’s “very successful quarter”, noting the Canadian wireless upstart now has over 150,000 subscribers.
(A Public Mobile spokesperson confirmed to Cartt.ca that the memo was the genuine article.)
“We finished the quarter with more than 150k customers, with September being the best month for growth in the history of Public Mobile,” wrote Krstajic. “More importantly, when we look at the results of the incumbents, our importance to value conscious Canadian consumers becomes even more evident. Public Mobile’s 40k net adds in the quarter was almost 50% higher than the combined prepaid growth of all three incumbents (at 27k), despite having a network that currently covers fewer than one-third of Canadians.”
While that’s true, the incumbents have almost walked away from the pre-paid market, focusing their resources on the rapidly growing and lucrative smart phone segment, a fact Krstajic also notes in his memo, explaining how both Bell and Telus lost pre-paid customers in the quarter. Public offers no smart phones at all, preferring to focus on what the industry often calls the “value-conscious” sector of the market.
“The lone exception is Rogers. Their obsession with putting new entrants out of business by launching chatr is coming back to bite them hard! They gained 87k prepaid subscribers, but have mostly just taken prepaid market share from Bell and Telus, while giving it back in postpaid subscribers and ARPU. IN the incumbent world you want to maximize the postpaid subscribers and minimize prepaid.”
For the full memo, click here to go to Mobile Syrup.
