12 September 2024 # What does a new phase of MVNO market evolution mean for the MVNO leader? ![](https://www.digitalk.com/images/blog/new-phase-mvno-market-evolution.jpg) What links [CUENTES Mobile](https://cuentas.com/mobile), an MVNO for US residents lacking access to traditional financial services and [Cape](https://www.cape.co/), a new cell service for Americans worried about their personal security and privacy? They’re examples of a still buoyant MVNO ecosystem evolving in interesting and even counter-intuitive ways—and whose emergence provides useful food for thought for both potential new entrants and existing players perhaps at a crossroads in the market. ## Understanding the main drivers of MVNO market evolution The data points come from a recent overview of MVNO developments from market watchers Omdia. Its Principal Analyst Julian Watson laid out what his team at the advisory group see as the immediate future of the MVNO market: - some MVNOs will shift to more of a traditional MNO model - some will be acquired - but a host of new ones will nonetheless still launch, of many intriguing types and in markets that have traditionally shown less openness to this kind of mobile business. Thus, since the start of last year, while there were only two new MVNO launches in the UK, Brazil saw no less than 5, Mexico three and Vietnam the same number. The US remains the most dynamic MVNO market, with nine new services in play, but places like Colombia, Poland and South Africa all saw at least one new such company debut in the last 18 months. (The Polish example, by the way, is [Phox](https://www.linkedin.com/company/phox-pl/), a provider of refurbished technology bundling smartphone rental with mobile plans.) ## Explosive growth? No—but still growth, and in new environments What’s significant here is that the long-forecast but long-overdue expansion of the MVNO model into new countries that have finally licensed MVNO players will inject competition and open up MVNO opportunity into previously closed markets. Underlining that new opportunity is the fact that this new global set of MVNOs come from a wide spread of sectors, too. Though the majority were either telecom or ‘pure MVNO’ models (38 and 30% respectively), the flexibility of the idea of an MVNO service for a target niche is borne out by the fact that 8% of 2023 and 24 launches were in fields like retail (8%), financial services (5%) and helping customers of utilities. In parallel, says Watson, the market’s seeing new MVNOs in areas like gaming, brewing, health, wearables—even around environmental issues. For sure, there is some real crossover right now between the worlds of the MNO and the MVNO, which suggests that there may be a certain amount of market consolidation going on here. Omdia’s analysis shows that telcos account for over half (56%) of the 16 announced or completed MVNO acquisitions that have occurred since the beginning of 2023, followed by players in the Finance sector (25%). Notably, 13% of MVNO M&A was conducted by other MVNOs. ## How can I benefit from this next wave of MVNO market evolution? None of this means that MVNO as a market won’t continue to be a ‘non-bumpy’ market. This can also be seen where we’ve ended up with MVNO revenue growth in the five biggest European telco service markets (Germany, the UK, France, Spain, and Italy). Here, Omdia says there is for sure some growth—but it’s not spectacular growth; it reports good subscription growth (5.7% in 2023), but much more modest sales growth, e.g., 1.9% in 2022 and just 1% in 2023. Interestingly, only the UK say overall market growth between 2019 and 2023, according to this data, while CCS Insight recently found that [MVNOs now represent 18% of all UK retail connections](https://my.ccsinsight.com/reportaction/6040/Marketing), adding 1.2 million customers in 2023 while the big four UK network operators managed just 2% new customer growth over the same period. So, the verdict must be that, perhaps apart from UK, overall MVNO growth continues but is slower in established markets. But—as we’ll see in our next blog on this topic--what’s interesting is that while revenue growth may not be stellar in such geographies, that isn’t actually the biggest reason for launching in countries that have established a strong MVNO market. Until Part 2, learn more about what Digitalk can do for MVNOs [here](https://www.digitalk.com/mobile-cloud/empower-your-mobile-brand). --- **Share this post** [ ![Copy link](https://www.digitalk.com/images/copy-link.svg) ](https://www.digitalk.com/javascript:copyToClipboard();) [ ![Twitter](https://www.digitalk.com/images/twitter-grey-boxed.svg) ](https://www.digitalk.com/javascript:window.open("https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url="%20+%20document.location.href)) [ ![Facebook](https://www.digitalk.com/images/facebook-grey-boxed.svg) ](https://www.digitalk.com/javascript:window.open("https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u="%20+%20window.location.href)) [ ![Linkedin](https://www.digitalk.com/images/linkedin-grey-boxed.svg) ](https://www.digitalk.com/javascript:window.open("https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url="%20+%20document.location.href))