T-Mobile have brought us some notable occasions over the past 12 months or so – firstly, a very good mobile broadband offering, second an extremely memorable ‘FlashMob’ advertising campaign, and thirdly the Google G1. But none of these instances have managed to help the company that is now 4th out of 5 in terms of Operator market share in the UK.
It’s rumoured that in fact T-Mobile might exit the UK the altogether, or alternatively merge with the 5th largest Operator, Hutchison Whampoa’s 3UK. Those options aside, T-Mobile might choose to tough it out and see if they can increase market share – but the UK is one of the most competitive markets globally – with a penetration rate that means Operators can only grow by taking other Operators’ shares (and reducing churn obviously).
The two big boys in the UK, O2 and Vodafone, have millions more subscribers than T-Mobile (and 3UK), and this presents T-Mobile a range of difficult options, as outlined above – question is, what should they do?
An exit of the market could certainly be the most traumatic for T-Mobile and it’s subscribers, and a merger could end up being the most expensive option (I don’t even want to think about the logistics involved!). But do our readers have a different view on what should occur?
Personally I think the current economic situation, combined with the rock-and-a-hard-place position of T-Mobile means that the time could be ripe for an exit, particularly if financial results continue to be less than stellar – parent company Deutsche Telekom will surely put some decisive action in place in the coming months…