Safaricom retains dominance as Airtel subscriber base gets boost

Kenya: Safaricom Ltd retained its pole position in Kenya’s mobile telephony industry with a subscription market share of 67.4 per cent. This is a slight increase of 0.7 per cent from 66.7 per cent recorded in the last quarter.

A quarterly sector statistics report for the financial year 2014/15 released by the Communications Authority (CA) states that the acquisition of Essar subscribers by Airtel Networks Ltd helped the latter increase its market share to stand at 22.6 per cent, up from 16.5 per cent posted during the previous quarter.

Money transfe

During the quarter under review (Covering between October and December, 2014), the number of mobile money transfer subscriptions stood at 26.0 million, down from 27.4 million recorded during the last quarter, representing a decline of 5.3 per cent

This could be attributed to the exit from the market by Essar Telecom (yu), which held 2.1 million mobile money transfer subscriptions, representing 7.8 per cent of the market share by end of the previous quarter.

The number of internet users also grew to reach 26.1 million, translating to 64.3 per 100 inhabitants with access to internet.

The number of data/internet subscriptions grew by 10.8 per cent to reach 16.4 million during the second quarter of the 2014/15 financial year. Mobile subscriptions continued to grow by 863,803 new subscribers joining the industry to now reach a total of 33.6million subscribers. Mobile penetration now stands at 82.6 per cent.

Subscriptions in the money transfer services dropped by 5.3 per cent to 26.0 million , down from 26.9 million recorded in the previous quarter. This could be attributed to the exit from the market of Essar Telecom.