Both Claro and Movistar, the two private mobile operators of the country, reported in its financial results for the first quarter, a sharp decline in their revenues from terminal sales in the country, compared to the same period last year. In the case of the Mexican company , said decrease was 17.2%, reaching a turnover of US$47 million in the segment. For its part, the Spanish company fell even more: 28.6 % to US$11 million.

These numbers contrast with the good performance that both companies had in the mobile business in general. There, Claro revenues grew 3.1% to US$412 million; while Movistar increased 4.1% to US$154 million.

In turn, the quarterly reports show that the drop in equipment sales is not a regional problem of the companies. In the case of Claro, negative results are seen oly in the segment in Chile and Ecuador ; while Telefonica fell significantly only in the block Venezuela - Central America and Ecuador itself.

Thus, it is clear that the problem has to do with the business conditions of Ecuador today, and especially with the restrictions on mobiles entry.

Most of these restrictions is the maximum import quota , which in August last year was increased from US$140 million to US$150 million per year.

Shortly after the announcement by the Government, the Association of Telecommunications Companies claimed that said quota, according to its calculations was enough for the import of just 45,000 Smartphones. According to its studies, the domestic market needs at least 800,000 smartphones per year to accompany the progress in Software.

However, the opening order was rejected by the Minister of Foreign Trade , Francisco Rivadeneira , who suggested the operators to focus their efforts in recycling old equipment.

New registration system. Another restriction on the entry of cell phones from outside the country is the new registry platform, implemented by the Servicio Nacional de Aduanas del Ecuador, SENAE (National Customs Service of Ecuador) together with the Superintendency of Telecommunications (SUPERTEL, for its Spanish acronym). It detects the equipment whose IMEI code has verification problems or is on the list of cell phones reported as stolen in both Ecuador and Bolivia, Peru and Colombia.

Since its commissioning on last March 12 until May, the platform rejected the entry of 680,000 cell phones, 240,000 of which had been reported as stolen. Many of the not allowed equipment were brought by importers for their commercialization.

Assembly project. Leveraging obstacles existing in imports, the company Hipetronics started by mid last year a project to assemble cell phones which launches to the market around 1,000 mobiles per day. Initially, it works only with inexpensive cell phones whose parts come from China. However, the company expects in the near future to assemble longer range devices having Android operating system.