Mobile market share in Switzerland
At the end of 2021 Swisscom had 6,177,000 mobile telephony customers in Switzerland, 0.8% or a total of 47,000 fewer than in 2020. It gained 128,000 contract customers (postpaid offers), but lost 175,000 prepaid customers. With 2,610,000 mobile customers, in the same period Sunrise UPC recorded a surge of 157,000 new sign-ups. A significant 175,000 increase in postpaid customers contrasted with the loss of only 19,000 prepaid customers. The number of Salt customers fell slightly to 1,806,200 (-1%) in 2021. The operator added some 67,000 postpaid contracts during the year, but at the same time lost 85,000 customers in the prepaid segment. The data available to us indicate that Swisscom had a market share of around 58% at the end of 2021, while Sunrise UPC occupied 24% and Salt 17%. The market share of other cable network operators remained at a relatively low 1%.
For over ten years now users of prepaid offers have increasingly been switching to contracts. Indeed, the market dynamic is being driven largely by this market segment, with the proportion of customers with contracts rising from 58% in 2011 to 80% in 2021. The proportion of contract customers has continued to rise at each of the three network operators in recent months, and now stands at 82.5% at Sunrise UPC, 80.6% at Swisscom and 76.0% at Salt.
Together they gained more than 350,000 additional postpaid contract customers in total in 2021. In this segment around 58% of the market fell to Swisscom, 25% to Sunrise UPC, 16% to Salt and 1% to CATV operators.
* The method used to count their prepaid customers differs between operators: Sunrise UPC 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 25.05.2022