Smart, Sun see sustained revenue growth

MANILA, Philippines - Dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) expects to sustain the continued growth in the share of postpaid subscribers of Smart and Sun Cellular to total wireless service revenues.

PLDT said the share of revenues from postpaid subscribers of Smart and Sun Cellular to total wireless service revenues has increased to 20 percent in the first half of the year from 18 percent in the same period last year and 16 percent in 2012.

During the period, PLDT said postpaid subscribers of both Smart and Sun Cellular jumped 17 percent to 2.6 million compared to 2.2 million in the same period last year.

In terms of revenues, Smart and Sun Cellular recorded a 14 percent growth from postpaid subscribers to P10.4 billion in the first half of the year from P9.1 billion in the same period last year.

Kathy Carag, head of Smart Postpaid, said the brand saw considerable growth in revenues from value-added services particularly from content offerings like Spinnr.

Spinnr is a mobile and web service launched last October that enables Smart and Sun subscribers to stream and download songs from its extensive music catalog.

“We expect to sustain Smart Postpaid’s strong performance as we continue to bundle traditional postpaid offerings, like voice and SMS, with access to relevant content. Just last month, Smart partnered with French streaming service Deezer to launch new postpaid plans that give subscribers access to the 30 million tracks in Deezer’s music library,” Carag said.

“Aside from coming up with postpaid plans that suit our subscribers’ evolving lifestyles, Smart provides customers with the best and ‘nationwidest’ network that enables them to fully enjoy our service offerings,” she added.

On the other hand, Sun Postpaid head Joan Dueñas attributed business growth to the brand’s attractive plan bundles that enable subscribers to get a phone and a tablet for as low as P450 a month.

She also noted the popularity of Plan 600 which combines data access with powerful Samsung, Alcatel, and Starmobile handsets and tablets.

“We are seeing further improvement in Sun Postpaid’s performance as we make available more relevant content like music, e-books, and games, as well as top-of-the-line smartphones,” she added.

The PLDT Group’s total subscriber base stood at 74.7 million as of end-June with cellular subscriber base numbering to 68.9 million including Smart with 25.6 million, Talk ‘N Text with 28.1 million, and Sun Cellular with 15.3 million.