Telecom Trends: Samsung to offer dual SIM phone

Friday, October 19, 2007

Samsung to offer dual SIM phone

For a while there have been dual-SIM phones available from small manufacturers in China.

Now, for the first time a major handset manufacturer, Samsung, recently announced the launch of a dual-SIM device to address the common phenomenon in Europe of people carrying more than one cell phone.

I have been talking about the impact of this kind of distortion in comparing market penetration rates between countries. The multi-SIM issue has led to some silly assertions from some quarters and feelings of inadequacies regarding communications services in Canada.

Samsung's product launch provides additional validation of the number of people that carry dual SIMs.

With more Canadians heading south thanks to a stronger dollar, maybe more of us will begin to carry a US SIM, leading to demand for this device here as well.

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Posted by Mark Goldberg @ 10/19/2007 06:34:00 AM

Comments:

Surely someone has done studies on exactly what sort of impact multiple SIMs have on uptake numbers. Can you point us in that direction? I suspect that once you strip out the effect of multiple SIMs, Canada would still look bad compared to Europe. And what about if you strip out multiple SIM effects in Canada? There are many people out there with a cellphone and a BlackBerry. How much worse would our uptake numbers be if you factored that out? Please provide specifics, or stop making such a specious claim.

Posted by

Anonymous : 10:55 AM, October 19, 2007

Yes, such studies have been done and continue to be done. There are many reports available off the shelf. I suggest you do a Google search by clicking on the link.

Posted by

Mark Goldberg : 11:22 AM, October 19, 2007

First off, the studies pointed to are from 2001 and 2002, so they're pretty dated. Secondly, they seem to prove the above point. In 2001, 17% of subscribers in Italy reported using multiple SIM cards. At the time, Italy had 78 mobile subscribers per 100 inhabitants - strip out the 17% and they had 61, which is better than what Canada has today including multiple SIM users, six years later! If the percentage cited were to hold today and was stripped out of Italy's uptake figures, the country would still have 104 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, versus Canada's 51 (according to the OECD's most recent figures). Same goes for the other countries cited: In 2001, without multiple SIM cards Finland would have had 68, Portugal would have had 69 and the UK would have had 68. If their percentages hold today, they'd have 95, 104 and 100 respectively. The only way Canada can look any better is if the incidence of multiple SIM cards in Europe has drastically increased since 2001, when these studies were conducted. Is there any evidence of that?

Posted by

Anonymous : 1:36 PM, October 19, 2007

Now you are asking for an awful lot of free consulting. I don't subscribe to that business model.

You're looking in the wrong places and not even reading that old Ofcom (then called Oftel) study correctly. The 17% did not refer to the number of 'extra' SIMs. And that is a 6 year old study limited to 3 countries... with some problems in the questions they asked.

You proved the point of how invalid the numbers are when you indicated that Italy would still have 104 subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Help me understand how you have accounted for all the multiple SIMs when you have that kind of result?

Google can help you search for more studies for free. I charge a little more than that! :-)

Posted by

Mark Goldberg : 1:45 PM, October 19, 2007