“Each first quarter is difficult and that’s what we felt this year, too. (…) The market decreased by 11% in February compared with January and the decline continued in March. Still, we can see things improving and sales starting to grow,” Costin Soare, chief operating officer of the local subsidiary of Avenir Telecom, told ZF.
Avenir Telecom is one of the largest European wholesalers of mobile phone products and services, which owns the GSM retail chain Internity in Romania.
“We expect the smartphone market to increase by 20%-25% in volume and by 15% to 20% in value this year.”
Smartphone sales reached 2.5 million units last year, and were worth half a billion euros. Market leader is South Korea’s Samsung, with an over 40% share, followed by Romania’s Visual Fan with its Allview brand. Visual Fan’s position is rather unusual for a EU country, where B brands like it usually are unable to climb so far up the ladder.
Could another company threaten Samsung’s position? No, Costin Soare does not think so.
“Surveys show the most powerful brands on the market are Samsung, Allview, Apple, Nokia-Microsoft and the operators’ own brands. Samsung has gained a lot of ground in the last few years and I find it hard to believe a competitor will be able to beat it soon.”
Avenir Telecom, which posted almost 60 million lei (EUR13.5 million) revenue in 2013, according to the Finance Ministry, saw growth on both its business segments in Romania, wholesale and retail, in 2014, Soare said.
“2014 was one of the best years lately for Avenir Telecom Romania in terms of sales and profitability growth.”
Sales growth came from the retail segment, where the company increased the number of new Telekom subscriptions by 40% and from the wholesale segment (accessories and Yezz mobile phones), Soare said.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)