SK Telecom maintained a market share in the 40% range in March.
However, since this figure was taken before a massive exodus of subscribers due to the server hacking incident, it is expected that the market share will record below 40% in April.
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT's wireless communication service statistics for March, SK Telecom had about 23.1 million subscribers, accounting for 40.4% of the total.
In March, the number of SK Telecom subscribers slightly increased from about 23.1 million in February, the previous month. However, as the total number of subscribers also increased, the market share decreased by 0.1 percentage points from 40.5% in February.
However, there is a strong possibility that the market share maintained by SK Telecom in the 40% range will break in April. According to the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA), about 237,000 customers moved from SK Telecom to other carriers in April.
If 237,000 is deducted from the March subscriber count in the Ministry of Science and ICT's statistics, the number of SK Telecom subscribers in April would be about 22.9 million.
Assuming the total number of subscribers remains the same as in March, SK Telecom's market share in April would be 39.9%, indicating that the 40% line was likely broken.
However, after the hacking incident, the number of subscribers who moved from SK Telecom to other carriers fell below 10,000 for the first time on the 15th, and the scale of the exodus is trending smaller.
Since the hacking incident was reported on the 22nd of last month, the number of subscribers who moved from SK Telecom to other carriers reached 34,132 on the 28th, when the free SIM card replacement service started, marking the first time it entered the 30,000 range.
This figure peaked at 38,716 on the 1st, and has shown a decreasing trend with 22,404 on the 3rd and 14,393 on the 5th.
Since the hacking incident, 345,646 subscribers have moved from SK Telecom to other carriers from the 22nd of last month to the day before, and the net loss, considering new subscriptions, was tallied at 302,918.