[24 March 2015] Sun Cellular emerged in 2014 as the country’s fastest growing postpaid brand in terms of subscriber base.  Sun Cellular set the pace for the mobile industry by posting 16-percent year-on-year growth in its subscriber base, according to the yearend disclosure of its parent firm PLDT.

The best value brand of PLDT grew at its fastest in the fourth quarter of the year, with a 38% increase in net subscriber adds. In a highly-competitive mobile market, Sun Cellular gained an average of about 10 percent net additional subscribers per quarter, throughout 2014.

According to Charles A. Lim, Executive Vice President and Wireless Consumer Division Head of Smart and Sun, “A diverse line-up of service and device offerings, successful brand campaigns, and regional expansion efforts were key factors in making Sun Cellular the country’s fastest growing postpaid brand in 2014.”

Combined with the postpaid subscribers of Smart, PLDT now has 55% of the mobile postpaid market in terms of subscriber base -- a 16-percent expansion of its postpaid wireless business, as earlier reported by PLDT. Over 2.8 million Filipinos are now on the combined network of Smart and Sun.

The telco exec also explained that the rapid growth of Sun Cellular has been driven by its unlimited voice and text offers, and further spurred by Sun Postpaid’s value-packed device bundles, new content services, and other relevant solutions for Filipino mobile users and SMEs.

“Alongside our sustained initiatives to grow our market, we will continue to roll-out service offerings that will spur usage across our rapidly expanding subscriber base,” Lim added.

Sun Cellular’s sustained growth in 2014 may be attributed to new services, gadget bundles and content offers it launched in 2014, including wearable bundles under the Sun Plan 499 or Plan 649 and tablet bundles under Sun Plan 450.  Sun Postpaid’s wearable plans came with a smartphone and wearable device, plus unlimited Sun calls and texts, texts to other networks, mobile surfing, and unlimited streaming of songs via Spinnr. 

Sun Plan 450, on the other hand, came with a Sun Bundle composed of a handset and a tablet.  Sun Postpaid also launched its postpaid add-ons such as the Value MIX which allowed subscribers to beef up their plans by creating their own bundles for just an additional P99 a month. Meanwhile, the Trinet add-on allowed Sun subscribers to call and text Smart and Talk ‘N Text subscribers, also for as low as P99. 

In the same period, Sun Business together with PLDT SME Nation and Smart Enterprise, ushered in the convergence of its fixed and wireless ICT solutions, including robust access solutions and value-added connectivity packages, geared to enhance the competitiveness and capabilities of SMEs in the country. With the PLDT Group’s world-class ICT solutions under one roof, it is much easier for the SME sector to communicate to the market, to respond to customer demands, and to  future-proof their businesses with a greater level of competitiveness and efficiency. 

Sun Cellular also opened access to a marketplace of rich content accessible anytime, anywhere. Subscribers enjoyed the benefits of mobile content and premium entertainment—all via their Sun-powered smartphones and tablets. Using their airtime, Sun subscribers can now enjoy unlimited streaming of songs via Spinnr, access a wide selection of digital books and local e-magazine titles for tablets and smartphones via Buqo, and purchase e-pins to enjoy online gaming via GameX.

To further expand retail presence, Sun Cellular unveiled the Sun Shop on Wheels – a new retail channel designed to provide the same in-store services as the regular Sun Shops in key Metro Manila cities and selected provincial areas. The brand also launched the Sun Choice Rewards, designed to provide perks to subscribers for continued use of Sun Cellular services.