Despite various media campaigns over the past few months, Airtel Nigeria ultimately lost more than 100,000 subscribers between December 2019 and January 2020.
However, while Airtel Nigeria’s subscriber base dropped, its rivals, Globacom and MTN Nigeria, recorded impressive growth in the total number of their respective active customers.
Based on the performance reports for January, it appears that Airtel’s strategy of using Nollywood actors in its commercials failed to appeal to its market audiences.
According to the recently released Telephone Service Report from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Airtel Nigeria recorded 49.9 million subscribers in January 2020, a slight decline from the 50.1 million it had recorded in December last year.
Now that Globacom has finally moved ahead of Airtel, the markets are eager to see how long it can maintain the number two spot right behind MTN Nigeria.
The NCC report showed that Globacom’s subscriber base had increased by 55,509 to reach 51.75 million in January, an improvement from the 51.70 million subscribers reported in December 2019. It is believed that the jump in Globacom’s subscribers has been due to its aggressive marketing which has helped it secure 27.85% of the market share.
MTN Nigeria has continued to maintain the number one position in the Nigerian telecoms sector. The company was the real winner in January, having added a staggering 1.93 million subscribers to its existing 68.7 million subscribers as recorded in December. This has increased MTN’s total active customers to 70.6 million in January 2020.