By end of March 2015, mobile operators in nineteen Arab countries had 414 million cellular lines, up from 413.6 million at yearend 2014, a mere growth of 0.1%. A new report from Arab Advisors Group analyzes and ranks cellular operators in the Arab World. The three cellular operators in Egypt; Vodafone, Mobinil and Etisalat were the largest Arab cellular operators in terms of subscriptions by end of March 2015.
Between September 2014 and November 2015, two MVNO's launched their operations in Saudi Arabia namely: Virgin Mobile Saudi Consortium and Jawraa Consortium "Lebara". Cellular subscribers in nineteen Arab countries reached 414 million by end of March 2015.
A new report, "A Scorecard of Key Performance Indicators of Cellular Operators in the Arab World" provides a comprehensive analysis of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of the mobile operators in the Arab World. The KPIs are for the year 2014 and March 2015. The report covers 47 operators in nineteen countries: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.
Prepaid services dominate the Arab cellular markets. By end of March 2015, fourteen operators had prepaid subscriber bases of 90% or more. The Arab Advisors Group believes that the rapid growth in cellular line bases in the Arab World is clearly due to the increasing appeal of prepaid offers.
"The cellular market in the Arab World is well ahead of the fixed line market. The aggregate cellular penetration rate by March 2015 was 110.9%, compared to a fixed line combined penetration rate of 8.4%" Ms. Mai Al-Zeir, Senior Research Analyst at Arab Advisors Group added.