Kenyans talking less as number of text messages register 11pc growth

A man scrolls on his cellphone. It is estimated each Kenyan sends at least three text messages a day. [PHOTO:FILE/STANDARD]

Nairobi; Kenya: Kenyans are embracing text messaging as the preferred and possibly cheaper means to pass information, at the expense of making phone calls.

Latest findings from the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) reveal a major shift towards short messaging, with each Kenyan sending at least three messages a day. The report shows a 10.8 per cent growth in SMS use and a 4 per cent drop in voice communication.

The statistics also shows Airtel’s money service suffered major losses while three competing providers booked gains. While CA did not give reasons for the shift towards ‘texting’, the changes in subscriber preference could determine earning trends for providers and inform new investments in their respective networks.

“...the number of subscriptions increased while mobile traffic declined,” CAK says in its report released last evening. The effect of the Sh8 billion buyout of Yu Mobile by both Safaricom and Airtel was not reflected as the deals were concluded outside the survey timeframe. Airtel acquired subscribers and prefixes, while Safaricom took over the physical infrastructure including base stations - in the single largest deal in the communications sector this year.

In its projections, the growing 3G internet platform holds the future of the mobile telephony services and the communications sector. A growing usage of smartphones in the Kenyan market translates to a wider spectrum of platforms that users could exploit to pass information, to further inflict losses on voice communication.

Already, mobile-based applications such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are widely used, especially in the younger age brackets that form the vast majority of the population. In its findings, CA found that every subscriber sent an average of 71.2 SMSs a month this year up from 65.1 last year.

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Conversely, phone users talked for 76.2 minutes a month on average in year ending June 2014, 4 per cent less compared to last year. Revenues from voice data still is the mainstay for the four mobile service providers but the drop could be a pointer that the other services including text messaging and data would be more crucial moving forward. “... despite the growth in mobile penetration, the total mobile voice traffic declined by 4 per cent during the quarter to register 7.3 billion minutes down from 7.6 billion minutes in the last quarter,” CA said.

Safaricom pulled ahead of competition, especially in M-Pesa – its mobile money transfer services where it added 2.2 million users to 19.7 million. Airtel lost 1.3 million customers on its money transfer services, while both Orange and Yu, – which has exited the market, reported gains.

During the March to June quarter, the number of mobile subscriptions grew by 416,390 to hit 32.2 million, representing a 5.6 per cent growth.