CAIRO: Mobinil plans to employ new mobile services this year to boost its profit margins despite an increasingly crowded market, its chief executive said. According to the most recent figures, Mobinil leads Egypt's market by subscriber numbers. It expects an increase in 2011 revenues per user due to technology such as mobile banking, cell phone data services and text messaging. “I can't talk about high growth anymore, it's behind us now. We will have growth in subscribers, but from a lower (income) segment. I will be more focusing on maintaining revenue and improving margins,” Hassan Kabbani, Mobinil's chief executive, told Reuters on Sunday. According to figures from Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry, mobile subscription rates have exceeded 80 percent in the Arab world's most populous country. However, competition between Egypt's three mobile providers – Mobinil, Vodafone Egypt, and Etisalat – has trimmed revenues, and Kabbani predicted the downward pricing spiral would continue in Egypt unless the regulator stepped in to fix the cost of connecting calls between networks. BM
