SIMBA (formally known as TPG Singapore) is the latest Mobile Network Operator (MNO) entrant to the Singapore wireless market. The company launched its commercial service in 2020 with a $10 for 50GB plan that was reportedly the cheapest in the market at the time. SIMBA has seen strong subscriber growth, and since its 2022 rebranding, SIMBA has added over 500,000 subscribers, with at least 100,000 Net Additions each half-year.
In this analysis, Opensignal leverages insights from our Subscriber Analytics solutions to demonstrate how SIMBA’s positioning as a low-price operator has led to steady yet impressive subscriber growth at other MNOs' expense.
Key Findings:
- Our data shows strong flowshare trends for SIMBA. SIMBA has reported strong and consistent growth since its 2022 rebrand. SIMBA has had the strongest competitive win share of all four MNOs in the five most recent quarters of data. Our data has also shown that despite doubling in size and gaining market share, SIMBA’s loss share has largely remained at a low level and has been consistent over the last year and a half, this implies that SIMBA is not only winning subscribers, but retaining those won subscribers on its network.
- SIMBA’s low price strategy has paid off, and is disrupting the market at a larger scale than other low cost alternatives. SIMBA gets a larger percentage of its customers from other MNOs than its MVNO and low price sub-brand competitors operated by the other MNOs in the market. SIMBA has been able to do this at a larger scale as evidenced by its market leading win share.
- SIMBA wins more from StarHub than other operators', winning 2.4 customers from StarHub for every customer they lose to them in 2024. SIMBA performs next best against M1 with 2 WPL in 2024 and then Singtel at 1.8 WPL in 2024. Finally SIMBA net loses to MVNOs and sub-brands with 0.7 WPL against this category in 2024.
Singapore is a highly competitive mobile market and has the fifth highest cellular penetration in Asia at 164%, according to TeleGeography. Singapore’s MNOs are Singtel, StarHub, M1 and its most recent entrant SIMBA. Per GSMA Intelligence, there are over 10 million mobile connections in Singapore.
After rebranding from TPG to SIMBA in 2022, SIMBA ended FY22 1H with 487,000 subscribers and FY24 2H with 1,053,000 subscribers, adding 566,000 subscribers over three full years. SIMBA’s growth has been consistent, adding over 100K subscribers over each of the past three half year periods, maxing out at 128K in H2 2023. Opensignal’s competitive switching data shows this strong consistent growth. From Q3 2023 to Q4 2024, SIMBA had the highest Win Share of any wireless operator in Singapore. Win share reflects the percentage of competitive switching gross adds in the market won by the operator — i.e., what proportion of the switchers on the market are going to the operator.
SIMBA has more than doubled the size of its customer base from FY2022 H1 to FY2024 H2, achieving more than a 10% market share in Q2 2024 per GSMA Intelligence. New entrants or operators with low market share typically have low loss shares in the beginning, which increase in time as these operators grow in size and contribute more churners to the market. However, SIMBA’s loss share has stayed relatively stable despite its growth, and is still quite low. This implies that SIMBA is not only winning subscribers, but retaining those won subscribers on its network. SIMBA’s worst quarter in terms of loss share, was Q3 2023 at 17.5% — but it still had the lowest loss share of the four Singaporean MNOs in this quarter. Loss share reflects the percentage of competitive switching gross losses in the market lost by the operator — i.e., how many switchers on the market moved away from the operator.
Opensignal’s Wins Per Loss (WPL) metric reflects the ratio of new gainers for the operator who came from its competitor, compared to leavers who switched to the said competitor. For SIMBA, for every churner it lost to MNOs in 2024, it gained two new customers from them. Out of its three MNO competitors, SIMBA performs the best against StarHub, with 2.4 wins per loss against StarHub in 2024. On the other hand, although SIMBA had a positive WPL against MVNOs in 2023, this number dipped to 0.6 WPL in 2024 meaning that SIMBA is losing more to MVNOs than it is winning. Due to SIMBA's low cost strategy, it is winning more from higher value MNOs rather than MVNOs or sub-brands. In this way, SIMBA operates similarly to the MNOs’ budget flanker brands, like StarHub’s Giga or Singtel’s GOMO.
SIMBA has also positioned its network experience well to attract low-price customers. Its Reliability Experience and Consistent Quality metrics have improved over the past year — meanwhile, its Download Speed Experience remains stagnant and has not increased as quickly as other Singaporean operators. These improvements have closed the gap on the difference between SIMBA’s network and the other Singaporean operators. Their coverage experience is also not too far off from the other Singaporean operators. Focusing on providing its users with a ‘good enough’ experience’, reflected in improved consistency and reliability of mobile services, combined with attractive pricing has paid off well for SIMBA.
Opensignal has the insights to help understand the state of competition between operators in a number of markets. If you want to learn more about our Subscriber Analytics capabilities, please contact us.
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