Competition in the Swedish Cellular Industry: Nobody Cares about Older People

Paper in proceeding, 2009

As the competition becomes intense, cellular operators are asked to be as creative as possible in dealing with their existing market. The penetration rate in the Swedish cellular market is too high to create a possibility for further market expansion as a tool to gain additional profit. Thus, instead of enlarging the market, keeping the existing market is preferred unless new services can be generated. Moreover, expansion is only effective if it is applied in a specific target group which is still unobserved by other competitors. This research tries to map current competition in the Swedish market through the method of Limited Dependent Variable (LDV) in investigating the likelihood of demand. We can thus define the competition among operators in some specific segmentation based on ages, education, gender and income. With LDV, the unobserved market can be found. This study mainly utilizes the data from Mobile Barometer, a Swedish survey conducted by Chalmers University of Technology. The results are quite surprising: most operators are focusing on the younger adult market, leaving the older people left behind. So why did the market players not offer something interesting for them?