Data consumption in Kenya is expected to grow by 41.1 per cent to reach 984 Million Gigabytes in 2022.
A research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) indicates that main growth drivers will be consumption through mobile devices, especially smartphones at 46 per cent.
‘’Smartphone traffic will benefit from the introduction of mobile data services from the likes of Safaricom. Social media networking will be an important communication channel too.’’ The report reads.
According to the report, there will also be an increased investment in infrastructure, which will support growth. The likes of Safaricom’s expansion of its fixed-data network is expected to increase smartphone traffic in the country.
All content types are expected to see a double-digit growth in consumption by 2022 with Games, Communication, Music and Video seeing the highest increase at 50, 47, 46 and 43 per cent increase by 2022.
Tablets, Smart Phone, and other portable devices are expected to increase in the country by 50, 46, and 41 per cent between 2017-2022, however, non smart-phones will see the slowest growth at only 8.3 per cent.
The research which also shows that Kenya is home to over 7 million users of Facebook, the main platform, while there are around 12 million users of WhatsApp and 4 million users of Instagram. Across Kenya, Express Wi-Fi services are available at over 1000 hotspots indicates that the popularity of social media networks and messaging apps are driving data usage.
Kenya is currently leading globally in share of internet traffic coming from mobile devices at 83 per cent, overtaking Nigeria, which was at the top in 2017 at 81 per cent.
