Mobile churn trends and customer retention strategies - Maintaining market share in the data-centric era

Churn is an important measure for demonstrating the ‘stickiness’ of customers to their mobile providers. Various components have an impact on churn trends, including quality of service, device availability, pricing, upgrades and subsidies, as well as tariffs and services.

In this analysis, we focus on how churn has been impacted by the introduction of innovative tariffs and services, device upgrade programmes and structural market changes.

According to GSMA Intelligence data, global connections churn has been on a downward trajectory since 2012. Yet, trends vary by region as churn has been declining in Asia whereas in Europe and the Americas churn has remained somewhat flat. Our research shows that of 130 operators who report churn figures on a regular basis, only 13 managed to reduce total churn on a yearly basis since 2011. Most of these operators are based in the developing world. The reduction in churn amongst these operators was either due to structural changes in the market or retention strategies that operators have implemented.