According to the Kenya Communications Authority sector report for the first quarter of the financial year 2016/2017, Safaricom Limited’s market share increased by 3.8 per cent to stand at 69 per cent from the previous quarter’s share of 65.2 per cent.
Over the same period, Airtel Kenya gained by 0.9 percent points to acquire a market share of 17.5 percent with Equitel also recording an increase in market share of 0.8 per cent to stand at 5.9 per cent.
On the flip-side, Telkom Kenya’s market share dropped significantly by 5.6 percentage points to 7.6 per cent while the market share for Sema Mobile Services remained below 0.0 per cent.
The Authority noted that Telkom Kenya’s decline was as a result of adjustments in Telkom’s reporting so as to comply with regulatory requirement, which defines subscribers ‘‘as those who have used a revenue generating service within the preceding 90-day period.’’
“The adjustment by Telkom also affected the number of Internet subscriptions, which declined by 4.5 per cent to stand at 25.6 million down from 26.8 million in the preceding quarter.” said the authority.
The total number of Safaricom’s subscribers stood at 26.6 million during the period under review compared to 25.9 million in the preceding quarter, an increase of 2.6 per cent. The telco’s number of pre-paid subscriptions stood at 25.4 million up from 24.8 million as recorded in the previous quarter while the number of post-paid subscriptions rose slightly to 1.1 million up from 1.07 million posted in the previous quarter.
Airtel subscriptions during the quarter grew to 6.7 million from 6.5 million subscriptions posted in the last quarter its number of pre-paid subscriptions at 6.6 million while post-paid stood at 147,359 subscriptions.
Telkom Kenya registered a total subscription of 2.9 million during the period down from 5.2 million recorded in the previous quarter. The pre-paid and post-paid subscriptions dropped by 44.1 per cent and 8.0 per cent respectively during the quarter under review.
Finserve Africa (Equitel) and Sema Mobile Services Limited subscriptions stood at 2.2 million and 266 pre-paid subscriptions respectively during the period under review.
Mobile Money Transfer
During the period under review, the total number of mobile money transfer subscriptions stood at 31 million while the number of mobile money agents stood at 169,698 with a total of 400.6 million transactions made valued at Ksh. 1.0 trillion. Safaricom accounted for approximately 78% of the Ksh 1.0 trillion transacted in the period.
