Retail Market Analysis - Mobile Phone Retailing in the UK for the last Essay

Retail Market Analysis - Mobile Phone Retailing in the UK for the last quarter of 2011 (October December) - Essay Example Current paper focuses on the mobile phone industry of UK; the country’s mobile retail market is analysed emphasizing on the last quarter of 2011. Reference is also made to the industry’s performance in the past, especially during 2011, since it is considered as a valid indicator of the industry’s performance not only in the last quarter of 2011 but also in the future. A problem has appeared when reviewing the performance of the sector’s major competitors for the last quarter of 2011: not all of these firms publish their financial accounts and it was not possible to retrieve these figures through the organizations’ websites. However, where such information was not available, other websites, providing information on this issue, have been used as alternatives for identifying the financial performance of mobile retailing firms in UK for the 4th Quarter of 2011. Also, where figures are not available for the particular period of time, such as for example in the case of Hutchison, reference is made to the performance of the firm for the entire 2011 so that the comparison of the performance of the firm with its rivals to be feasible. Mobile phone sector in the UK - overview Mobile phone industry is quite valuable for the UK economy. Currently, the mobile connections in UK are estimated to 81 million (Mobile Operators Association 2012). In fact, the sector’s operators have managed to gain about a 71% of the telecommunications sector in UK (Mobile Operators Association 2012).... Five are the sector’s competitors, as highlighted in Figure 1 below. Customers of these firms seem to be quite satisfied with the services provided to them; in a survey conducted in 2010 it was revealed that a percentage of 93% of the industry’s customers are quite satisfied with the quality of customer services within the particular industry (Mobile Operators Association 2012). The key point for the transformation of the UK mobile retailing industry has been the merger of Orange UK with T Mobile UK in July, the 1st of 2010 (Everything Everywhere 2010). Since then, the distribution of power among the industry’s competitors has been significantly changed, as analysed below. 3. Mobile phone sector in the UK for the last quarter of 2011 (October – December) – industry analysis 3.1 Competition As already noted above, five are the major competitors in the UK mobile phone industry (Figure 1); through the years, these firms have tried to keep their share i ntact, despite the high industry’s competition (Figure 2). The graph in Figure 1 reveals that new entrants or substitute products do not threaten the performance of the industry’s major competitors, as this issue is taken into consideration when evaluating a firm’s performance using the Porter’s five forces model on industry competition. In fact, the market share of these firms seems to be standardized, being kept at same levels from 2008 up to 2010 (Figure 1). A similar trend, in terms of performance, would be expected for 2011, as also verified by the graph in Figure 2. Figure 1 – Five major competitors in the UK mobile phone industry, performance for the period 4thQ of 2008 up to the 1stQ of 2010 (Source: Telecoms Market Research 2011) On the other hand, the graph in Figure 2 below reveals a