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Estonia's leading telecommunications company EMT considers competitor Elisa's interpretation of a TNS Emor survey to be an outright lie and data manipulation.
EMT disagrees with Elisa's claim of lead in private customer market
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EMT said its market share by 2012 results is 45 percent. Before the publication of competitors' data the company estimated its market share at 44 percent but it proved to be one percentage point bigger. EMT firmly holds the leading position on the market in terms of both contractual private customers and corporate customers, the company told BNS.
Basing on a recent survey by TNS Emor, Elisa announced on Thursday it had taken the lead ahead of EMT in the private customer segment of the telecommunications market.
EMT said the study was a market research commissioned by Elisa that made generalizations about the whole market on the basis of statements of 1,000-1,500 people.
Furthermore, market shares of the three operators included in the survey add up to 97 percent (Elisa 34 percent, EMT 32 pecent, and Tele2 31 percent), which probably means that EMT's market share does not include its low-cost brand Diil, EMT observed. If the remaining 3 percent is Diil's share, EMT's overall market share is bigger than Elisa's at 35 percent even on the basis of this survey, but in reality the difference is larger still.
The customer number Elisa disclosed to the stock exchange is 565,700. EMT has 868,000 clients in its customer base with contractual customers numbering 597,000 and users of pre-paid call cards 271,000, the company said. Elisa has so far not revealed the proportion of customers who have entered into a contract and pre-paid card users among its clients, but claims on the basis of the study to be leader of the pre-paid card segment with a 40 percent share. This shows that pre-paid card users make up a very big part of Elisa's client base, but as a rule such customers are less loyal than those who have entered into a contract and use the service for shorter periods of time or temporarily, EMT said.