Voice services contribute the most revenue to Kenya’s mobile sector, according to a report by CA. The Communication Authority revealed that voice services contributed 39% of the sector’s revenue in 2018. Mobile money follows closely, with transfer services generating 33% of the total revenue. Data and Short Message services (SMS) contributed the least, bringing in 20% and 8% respectively.
Safaricom holds the largest share of the sectoral voice revenue, leading by 85.4%. Airtel follows with 9.4%, with Telkom and Finserve Africa trailing at 4.9% and 0.4% respectively.
While voices’ contribution is still significant to Kenya’s mobile sector revenues, reliance on voice services for income is not sustainable in the long term. Trend data shows that global preference of voice is declining as customers move to instant messaging apps and Volp.
Related; Voice calls decline as users opt for over the top applications.
At the same time, quarterly trends show a decline in the volume of voice traffic. For instance, Safaricom PLC recorded a decrease in voice traffic from 9.8 billion minutes in Q1 2019 to 9.19 billion minutes in Q2. At the same time, Finserve’s voice traffic fell from 33.2 million minutes in Q1 2019 to 30.9 million minutes in Q2 2019.
SEE ALSO: Sub-Saharan Telcos need to restrategize or fall out.
