Summary
Germans as a group are frugal, environmental and disciplined. This is simply a response to tough economic times.
Analysis
In uncertain economic times people try and cut back on many discretionary expenses (this would exclude: rent, mortgage, auto) which are a large portion of every household budget. Cutting 3% out of the phone bill would be easy to do. Users who do not have unlimited plans took conscious decisions to make sure they didn't exceed their plan limit where the additional minutes become much more expensive. You don't need a large portion of the user base to keep under the limits to effect a 3% change.
I would imagine that if we looked at other commodity statistics for Germany such as fuel consumption and dining out similar or greater contractions would be observed.
This number is neither surprising or out of line with general economic trends.
This author consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
