Vodafone is the largest international mobile telecommunications company in the world. Vodafone has its headquarters in the UK. This paper focuses on what Vodafone had to consider in concerns to entering the Egyptian market in 1998. “Vodafone’s corporate growth strategy is to use the technical and managerial expertise of the parent company to enter markets and leverage this knowledge in its subsidiaries. A major Vodafone corporate goal is to be the market leader in each market it serves” (Harlow, 2011, p.1).
Vodafone, being the market leader, and wanting to expand, had to take into account many points of emphasis as a decision was being made. Vodafone decided to look into the possibility of expanding into Egypt after the deregulation of the Egyptian telecommunications market in 1998. The decision involved strategic issues and internal considerations. Vodafone put emphasis on global growth expansion into mobile markets worldwide, and they had a decision matrix for assessing new investments. The first investment point of emphasis was looking at the country’s political stability. Although there was some political unrest in the region, Vodafone’s executives decided that Egypt was a stable country, and more importantly had the opportunity to provide substantial returns without a lot of upfront initial investment.
Another important criterion to Vodafone was the role of the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (NTRA).
“Egypt was opening its economy to more foreign direct investment in order to grow more quickly and provide jobs for an ever increasing and young work force. The NTRA had promised quick decisions on rates and tariffs and was anxious to get a competitive multinational company established in the Egyptian mobile market to compete with the locally owned Mobinil which had started mobile service in 1995” (Harlow, 2011, p.6). Vodafone had to consider their ability to get returns on an initial investment in Egypt, due to the company
References: About Vodafone Egypt. (2011, March). Retrieved from http://www.vodafone.com.eg/vodafoneportalWeb/en/P613722281289132343406 Harlow, H. (2011). Vodafone Egypt (A): the investment decision. Retrieved from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/case_studies.htm?articleid=1917140&show=abstract