State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

I am glad to share the announcement of a new social initiative around Corporate Social Responsibility:

SocialBridges.Org - Seeking corporate social leadership in Pakistan.

This is a sign that citizen journalism and blogging is taking off in Pakistan. The topics and content of the SocialBridges will appeal to the growing consumer and commercial segment which needs a strong voice. There are some great insights there with a high-profile set of authors. I look forward to some thought-provoking stories there. See this announcement from Green & White.

Of course Telecom sector in Pakistan has been a major force behind corporate involvement in society. Consider the recent presentation by Zouhair Khaliq, CEO of Mobilink at TeleCON 2008 event in Karachi. The title of his presentation was Mobilizing Social Change and he talked about the recent launch of Mobilink Foundation. Get the full presentation in pdf: Mobilink presentation: Mobilizing Social Change.

Tee Emm was not impressed by the corporate brochure readout by Zouhair. However Bilal Mughal thought that there were positive aspects in Zouhair’s presentation. He writes this at Telecom Grid Pakistan:

Industry revenues are based on these mainstream factors and eliminating poverty is the heartbeat of all the problem whether it comes to you in the form of purchasing power or uplifitng the life trends from one consumer sect to another (higher). These things grow to be a central part of your company plans especially in our GDP environment and rotating them around different conferences provides with the direction to other participants to target the source issue of the market because at the end of the day if I sell dialup connection I would not want to sell at 2Rs if I’m selling at 5 today and you can only do that by increasing the consumer power at various levels and keeping it stable.

Here’s the new world order in handsets for Q1 2008, based on an undisclosed research report.

Motorola drops to number three in volume terms and number five in value terms.

LG was the winner for the quarter with a YoY volume growth rate of 54% followed by Samsung with 33% growth. The market grew 14%. Motorola wasn’t the only loser. Sony Ericsson lost market share. And so did Apple. RIM and HTC are gaining smartphone share.

The handset market grew at YoY rate of 14% and again grew slightly less concentrated, with the top-five vendors taking 83.5% of global volume. This compares to 84.5% during the same period a year ago and 83.6% during Q4 2007. This is a reflection of both Motorola’s share loss and specialty vendors such as RIM, HTC and Apple taking higher-end share and smaller vendors taking some at the low-end (for example, the success of operator-branded handsets in Europe and some emerging markets).

The Korean vendors have been hedging their bets, using every form factor and platform known to man while working hand-in-hand with operators in key markets. In addition, Samsung and LG have been helped by the South Korean won’s weakness, which is at a two-year low against the U.S. dollar and even lower against the Euro.

Nokia’s market share for Q1, at around 41% according to Strategy Analytics, is up almost four points year-on-year and steady from the previous quarter. The combined share of Samsung, Motorola, LG, and Sony Ericsson was around 42.6%, meaning Nokia is close to matching the combined volumes of the two, three, four, and five vendors.