Mobile phone operators sell the most mobile phones in Romania, but their importance in the whole process has significantly decreased in the last year, or at least that's what the CEO tells us eMAG, Iulian Stanciu.
According to him, mobile phone operators in Romania now have sales that represent 55% of all mobile phones sold in Romania, their market share being 15 percent lower than the one recorded a year ago, the decrease being significant.
The 15 percent of the market share was redistributed to the various physical and online stores in Romania, the market share of those from eMAG growing to 20% at the moment and as things stand, it will probably continue to grow in the next year, even if we are talking about a smaller percentage.
According to the CEO of eMAG, it seems that the reduction in the application of subsidies for the price mobile phones would be the basis of this drop in the sales share, and the explanation is credible considering that most Romanians buy subsidized phones from operators.
It was a change in the market, I could say, in the sense that a year ago the total phone market was about 70% controlled by operators. Currently, it has reached 55% of operators, in terms of value. What happened: the operators no longer subsidized telephones in the same way as they used to subsidize before because a greater competition between them started, probably the regulations from the EU reduced the operators' ability to subsidize telephones, so they also moved to the free market.
The new EU regulations in this field and the competition between operators are mentioned as causes for limiting subsidies, but regardless of the situation, the cause matters less, the effect being the most important at the moment, the operators losing money along with the market share.
We have noticed since 2013 that mobile phone operators started to sell mobile phones at prices similar to those in European stores, but with much lower subsidies, and this strategy definitely affected their total sales of mobile phones.
If, despite this decrease in sales, the strategy has not changed, then it is clear that next year online stores will record even higher sales of mobile phones.
