An examination of the diffusion of prepaid mobile telephony in selected emerging markets and developing economies

•A logistic diffusion model is extended to accommodate customers’ disadoption.•The model is calibrated using prepaid mobile phone data of 12 countries.•The diffusion speed and the disadoption rate exhibit variability across countries.•The variation in each measure is explained by marketing and socio-economic factors.•The presence of learning cost curve is a key element to enhance profitability. Cellular phones have gained popularity in emerging and developing economies over the last two decades. In this study, we show that the phenomenon of falling prices over time is applicable to the diffusion of prepaid mobile phones. This article extends the logistic diffusion model to accommodate disadopters of the service category. Goodness of fit of the extended model is found superior to the original version, which does not consider disadoption. The empirical findings show that for the 12 countries considered in the analysis, the diffusion speeds and the disadoption rates are influenced by one marketing factor and three socioeconomic factors.