What you need to know
Ownership of smartphone devices remains at peaks levels across the island of Ireland, indicating that the Irish mobile phone sector is a mature market. The market continues to be dominated by Samsung, Apple’s iPhone and the Android and iOS operating systems, making it difficult for other manufacturers and operating systems to grow.
Irish consumers express satisfaction with the coverage and customer service levels of their mobile network, which helps to explain why few consumers switched providers in the last 12 months. Irish consumers would however consider switching to a mobile provider that offers free data that can be used with certain apps and services. As such, zero-rating popular services or enabling consumers to modify data allowances to better reflect their usage could help encourage them to change providers.
Issues covered in this Report
This Report covers the Irish consumer market for mobile phones and mobile network providers. Mobile phones are defined as any device being used to place or receive calls by connecting to a mobile network. ‘Basic mobile phones’ and ‘Feature phones’ are terms used to describe non-smartphones.
Mobile networks are defined as networks providing either data, voice or SMS (Short Message Service) facilities to a mobile device. Data delivered over Wi-Fi is not included under the ‘data’ category. Primarily, this Report refers to the use of mobile networks through traditional mobile phones or smartphones. However, reference is also made to tablet devices, as these can connect to mobile networks for data.
Network connections can come in two forms – prepaid and post-paid. The former involves buying credit for a phone, which is then worked through, while the latter refers to the use of a handset with a monthly contract charge covering the previous month’s usage.
Prepaid is better known to consumers as ‘pay-as-you-go’ (PAYG) and is referred to as such throughout this Report. Similarly, ‘post-paid’ is better known to consumers as ‘contract’ and is referred to as such throughout this Report. SIM-only refers to a contract with a phone that has been paid off.
