According to the latest report from Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), Airtel recorded a massive 1.2 million increase (20.7%) in subscribers in the three months to December 2017, a period when opposition NASA launched a boycott of products from Safaricom accusing them of working with Jubilee Govt.
Safaricom’s share of the mobile voice market and subscriptions dropped by 4.4 and 2.8 percentage points respectively during the period. Safaricom’s share of the voice traffic also dropped to 72.5 per cent in the three months to December 2017 down from 76.9 in the previous quarter. Its market share by subscriptions dropped to 69.1 per cent compared to 71.9 per cent recorded during the previous quarter.
Airtel’s market share by voice traffic grew by 4.6 percentage points to 22.2 per cent up from 17.4 per cent, while its market share by subscription rose to 17.2 per cent from 14.9 per cent recorded during the previous quarter.
During that period, NASA leaders asked their supporters all over the country to boycott products from Safaricom, Bidco & Brookside. Mr Odinga led Nasa MPs in buying Airtel Sim cards at the time.
Safaricom’s customers, however, increased their talk time, raising the minutes count to a total of 8.55 billion minutes of local mobile voice traffic during the quarter under review up from 8.51 billion minutes registered in the previous quarter.
Airtel’s total traffic volume increased to 2.5 billion minutes up from 1.9 billion minutes recorded in the previous quarter.
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