Mobile market share in Switzerland
At the end of 2023 Swisscom had 6,202,000 mobile telephony customers in Switzerland, which is 0.5% or a total of 29,000 more than in 2022. It gained 129,000 contract customers (postpaid plans) but lost 100,000 prepaid customers. Sunrise recorded growth of 2.5% over the same period. This operator had 2,836,000 mobile customers at the end of 2023. It gained 141,000 customers in the postpaid segment, while losing 71,000 in the prepaid segment. The number of Salt customers also increased, now standing at 1,977,000 (+5%). This operator added some 120,000 postpaid subscriptions during the year, and at the same time lost 26,000 customers in the prepaid segment. The data available to us indicates that Swisscom had a market share of around 56%, with Sunrise occupying 25.5% and Salt 18%. The market share of the cable network operators (CATV) remained low at less than 1%.
For over ten years now, the market dynamic has been driven largely by the contract segment. Users of prepaid offers have increasingly been switching to contracts, with the proportion of contract customers rising from 61% in 2013 to almost 85% in 2023. The proportion of contract customers has continued to rise at each of the three network operators in recent months, and now stands at 87% at Sunrise, 85.1% at Swisscom and 81.1% at Salt.
Together the operators gained more than 390,000 postpaid contract customers in total in 2023. In this segment, Swisscom held some 56% of the market, Sunrise 26%, Salt 17% and CATV operators 1%.
* The method used to count their prepaid customers differs between operators: Sunrise uses the 3-month rule, while Swisscom and Salt use the 12-month rule. This method takes into account prepaid customers with an active SIM card who have made at least one inbound or outbound connection to the network in the last three or twelve months.
Last modification 14.05.2024