Free Mobile: 11% of the market in 21 months!

Operator Xavier Niel has attracted 7.4 million subscribers in less than two years. An excellent result, even if the share of packages 2 euros remains unknown.

Attracted 7.4 million subscribers in 21 months: all operators dream, Free Mobile has done, and can now take advantage of 11% market share in France. While the group has won "only" 640,000 new customers in the third quarter 2013, its worst performance since its launch in January 2012, but progress is still much better than the competition: 131,000 new customers for Orange, 188,000 for SFR over the same period, according to Les Echos. The troublemaker Xavier Niel has succeeded in settling comfortably on the French mobile market, in addition to its fixed offers.

However, Free does not communicate the proportion of its customers who have purchased a package at zero and two euros. The operator offers a package indeed very cheap (2 euros per month, or zero euro Free box subscribers), which has little or no cost. Presumably many moving lines are created by some 5.6 million subscribers to fixed broadband offers. The only clue Free welcomed in a statement to have "accelerated his conquest of subscribers to users with moderate consumption.