Virgin Mobile has announced it will exit the Singapore market completely by October 2002 as a result of weak economic conditions and overall market saturation.
The company, which is a joint venture between the Virgin Group and SingTel, has decided to concentrate on its Virgin Mobile joint venture in Australia, which is unaffected by the pullout, according to Virgin Mobile Singapore managing director Jonathan Marchbank.
“Our primary concern is to make sure that there will be no inconvenience in the transfer of services for our customers,” Marchbank said.
“We will communicate with them to explain how the changes will take place in the coming weeks.”
The Singapore mobile business started trading in October 2001 and currently has 30,000 customers.
But this compares unfavourably to separate Virgin Mobile customer bases in the UK and Australia, which are 1.8 million and 220,000 respectively.
Recent strategic reviews by both Virgin and SingTel have identified the Singapore market as too saturated to sustain an otherwise successful virtual network operator model.
“The Singapore mobile market is one of the region’s smallest and most mature with a large number of existing players relative to its population and very little growth,” Marchbank continued.
“As a new operator we are feeling the full impact from operating in a very competitive environment, which is aggravated by the prolonged economic downturn.”
Marchbank said that both partners have their own investments in mobile operations elsewhere in the Asia Pacific.