New Year Same Old Trend - Phone Card Sales Declining

Well we are now into the new year and I started to reflect on the past year and the year ahead. For the most part 2009 saw a substantial decline in overall phone card sales and I'm afraid we will continue to see the same trend throughout 2010. Prepaid Mobile phones with competitive international rates are only going to get more aggressive this year and with increased penetration of broadband in recent immigrant households, VOIP services like Skype and Vonage will also continue to errode the phone card market share.

Nobody beats phone card rates, but drop dead lowest rates is not always the most important factor, the convienience of these other services along with decent (and clean) rates seems to be the deciding factor in most purchases.

I don't want to be all gloom and doom here so I will point out that there are some positive trends that I have noticed:

1. Prepaid Mobile sales have been growing (lower margin and higher risk)
2. These new International Mobile Top-Up products have delivered a nice volume of sales (lower margin)
3. Prepaid cash cards have seen a slight increase in demand

While the above have certainly helped, they have not replaced the amount of traditional phone card sales volume lost. If we could just get another product like International Mobile Top-Up, I think we would all be able to return to our business levels of years past!

Here's to hoping for something new and revolutionary will come in 2010!

Cheers!

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