Orange Spain has acquired rival KPN’s Simyo MVNO for an undisclosed fee in a sign of consolidation in the Spanish mobile market.

The price paid for Simyo Spain, which has 380,000 subscribers, was not disclosed.
Orange says the MVNO will continue to operate as an independent brand and will still be hosted on its network.

Spain’s mobile market has contracted during 2012, a symptom of the country’s economic crisis which has hit employment levels and left its citizens looking to save money, as well as subsidy cuts by individual operators.

However while its main rivals – Telefonica and Vodafone – have seen their customer bases decline this year, Orange has succeeded in maintaining subscriber growth during 2012.

The addition of Simyo’s subscribers brings Orange Spain’s total subscribers up to 12.2 million (end-September 2012 figures), according to the company’s own numbers.

In addition, Orange seems to have found a willing seller in KPN which has been trying to offload its Spanish MVNO for some time. A year ago, there was speculation that the Dutch operator was selling the same unit to Vodafone.

In the end, that deal never materialised but now KPN has succeeded in a closing deal for the MVNO, which launched its service in Spain five years.

Elsewhere, KPN sold Simyo France in 2011to Bouygues Telecom, although this is a smaller operation than the MVNO’s Spanish operation with an estimated 180,000 subscribers at the time of the sale.

KPN still owns Simyo operations in Belgium, Germany and Netherlands. It has not said whether it intends to sell any of these remaining units.