Middle East and Africa operator group Zain believes the region is unlikely to experience a European-style round of consolidation and the company is instead focused on ramping up efforts to become a “digital lifestyle operator” via partnerships with companies such as Uber.

Speaking to Mobile World Live ahead of his keynote appearance at next week’s GSMA Mobile 360 Middle East event in Dubai, Zain CEO Scott Gegenheimer predicted: “I don’t believe there will be much in-country or cross-border consolidation, so the status quo for regional operators will continue for the foreseeable future.”

Instead, Gegenheimer urges operators to work on ways to “avoid the destructive competition in our markets… We are all facing major revenue threats from the OTT players that are already eating enormous chunks of our revenues, and further price competition and subsidies on devices will not be a healthy option for any of us in the long term.”

At last year’s Mobile 360 event Gegenheimer stressed the need for operators to be a ‘smart pipe’ and move into new markets. Twelve months later, the Zain CEO is keen to highlight its own progress in this area.

Uber
In Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia the company has rolled out a “first of its kind” partnership with taxi hailing app Uber. And in Kuwait – where Uber isn’t expected to launch until later this year – Zain offered services to outbound customers who travelled to the USA, UK and UAE during the recent Eid Al Adha holidays.

Gegenheimer says the partnership sees Zain provide “superior network quality and ease of use for Uber driver partners”, while future plans include the enablement of mobile payments for Uber services as well as the provision of Wi-Fi in vehicles for Zain customers.

Deals with other “established entities” are in the works, adds the Zain boss.

Smart cities/M2M
Gegenheimer also claims that the company has recognised the “enormous potential” of new revenue streams like smart cities and M2M.

In February Zain announced a deal with neXgen Group, a smart city consultancy based in the UAE, which will see both entities join forces in advising governments and large real-estate developers in facilitating the deployment of smart city solutions across the region. “We expect to be a major force in the smart cities arena in the region and are excited by the opportunities available,” comments Gegenheimer.

And earlier this year Zain also expanded its ‘Partner Market Agreement’ with Vodafone to deliver M2M services to enterprise and government sectors across the region in a variety of vertical sectors such as automotive, asset tracking and smart metering.

Microsoft Office 365
“Our growth strategy in mature markets going forward is to grow in B2B enterprise, and also to find a second wave of revenues via digital services,” notes the Zain head.

To that end, in November 2014 Zain announced the launch of ‘Microsoft Office 365’ services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was a first in the Arab states of the Gulf. This was later introduced in Kuwait in the first quarter of 2015. Other Zain operations are set to introduce the Microsoft 365 service throughout 2015 and 2016.

Zain, Kuwait’s top mobile company by subscribers, has operations in eight diverse markets, including Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. The company claims to have 46.3 million active customers.