Rosy Viettel outlook strangled by competition in Cambodia

Metfone, a mobile telecommunications brand in Cambodia owned by Vietnamese military-run Viettel Group, is confronted with intense competition vying for its leading position in the Cambodian market. Viettel’s Cambodian operations flew past the break-even point and are sending home more than its initial investment capital in profit RELATED CONTENTS: Viettel: Success story in business and defence Viettel looking back at ten years of development Viettel accelerating foreign expansion Viettel sets 4G world record in ‘impossible’ time VN among top investors in Cambodia Competition heating up Currently, there are nearly 20 million mobile subscribers in Cambodia, of a 16-million population. Metfone is leading the Cambodian mobile telecommunications market with about 8.9 million subscribers. The second position belongs to Malaysian brand Smart Mobile (Smart Axiata) with 7.4 million subscribers, then Cellcard of The Royal Group of Cambodia (Cambodia’s largest diversified conglomerate and holding company with investments in various industries) with 2.4 million subscribers. Qb, Seatel, and Xinwei have the least number of subscribers in Cambodia. The growth of Smart Axiata was thanks to the acquisition of Hello, another mobile operator in Cambodia, in 2012. The deal was valued at $155 million. In 2016, Smart Axiata announced that it had three million mobile data subscriptions, while Metfone had only 1.6 million. In 2010, two years after entering the Cambodian market, Metfone became a formidable competitor in Cambodia. Among nine mobile operators sharing 6.3 million subscribers in Cambodia, Metfone held 24.1 per cent of the market with about 1.7 million subscribers. This year, Cellcard of… [Read full story]