Airtel adds 4.5 million subscribers in April, says COAI; RJio's market share rises

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) revealed that mobile subscribers increased by 9.39 million in April 2018 month. Cumulatively total number of mobile subscribers as of April 2018 now stands at 1,049.74 million. Among the data, telecom giant Bharti Airtel bagged highest number of subscribers with 309 million, which was led by 4.5 million net subscribers additions in the in April month. It needs to be noted that, rival Reliance Jio does not share their subscriber numbers with COAI, therefore not much will be mentioned about Mukesh Ambani led company.

Going ahead, Airtel was followed by Vodafone on second spot with 222 million subscribers as of April 2018. However, the company’s net addition of subscribers was negative at 0.7 million alone in April month.

Meanwhile Idea Cellular stood at third spot with 217 million  subscribers as of April 2018. Interestingly, Idea outrunned Airtel in net addition of subscribers in April month alone by adding 5.6 million.

Numbers of subscribers were not revealed for companies like Aircel, Telenor and MTNL.

As of April 2018, Airtel continues to be in lead with market share of 29.41% of subscribers, followed by Vodafone with 21.15%, Idea with 20.65% and RJio with 17.77%. Other telcos like MTNL, Telenor and Aircel held market share of 0.34%, 3.62% and 7.06% respectively.

If we look at the chart given by COAI, the market share of telcos except RJio in April month  has decreased if compared with March 2018 data.

As of March 2018, Airtel had a market share of 29.60%, Vodafone of 21.72%, Idea of 20.22%, Aircel of 8.15%, Telenor of 3.93%, MTNL of 0.36% and RJio of 16.02%.

From above, it’s quite evident that RJio is gaining momentum in terms of addition of subscribers.

Operator wise growth has been good in Idea by 2.75% over previous month. On the other hand, Airtel had a growth of 1.48%, whereas Vodafone declined by 0.30%.

It needs to be pointed out, the net addition of overall subscribers in April month, is lower massively than compared to net addition of subscribers in March 2018 where the numbers stood at 21.87 million.