The Hungarian unit of mobile phone giant Vodafone expects to grab a fifth of the market by the end of the year - an increase of 20 percent in one year - Chief Executive Attila Vitai said on Friday.
He said Vodafone, the late entrant to the 10.1 million strong Hungarian market, caught the tail end of the rapid growth phase and aimed to keep on increasing its share even as the market nears saturation with penetration already at 80 percent.
According to data from telecoms watchdog NHH, market leader Westel, owned by the incumbent Matav group, had a market share of 47.73 percent at the end of February against 48.89 percent in February 2003. Matav is controlled by Deutsche Telekom.
Second-ranking Pannon GSM, a unit of Norway's Telenor, saw its share decline to 35.24 percent from 37.69.
Vitai said Vodafone would increase its market share to 20 percent by the end of the year, from 16.75 percent now.
"In the past twelve months we have been growing 0.3-0.4 percent per month in terms of market share, and I see no reason whatsoever for that to drop," Vitai said. "I would be most surprised if we would be below 20 percent by the end of the year."
NUMBER PORTABILITY GAINS: Hungary will introduce mobile number portability on May 1, one of the last legislative steps for its already deregulated market to fall in line with standards of the European Union, which the country joins on that same day.
Both Westel and Pannon said they expect a tougher fight, but are also confident they can woo their rivals' unsatisfied customers who have so far been reluctant to swap operators so as not to lose their existing phone numbers. Vitai, however, was confident about Vodafone's position in that battle.
"Independent customer research shows that far more customers are likely to leave Westel and Pannon than Vodafone and of those leaving Westel and Pannon we are overwhelmingly the first choice of where customers will go," he said.
But EU entry would have its advantages for all three operators, he added, as they would no longer have to pay import duty on handsets and other equipment purchased from EU firms.
May 1 will also be the date when Westel will be rebranded T-Mobile, formally joining Deutsche Telekom's mobile arm, the world's second largest.
Westel CEO Andras Sugar told Reuters recently he expected the rebranding to bring benefits in additional roaming traffic and through joining T-Mobile's global advertising.
He also expected additional benefits from T-Mobile's fresh FreeMove alliance with Spain's Telefonica Moviles, Italy's TIM and Orange.