Safaricom’s voice market share declines as competitors gain

Safaricom’s share of the mobile voice market and subscriptions dropped by 4.4 and 2.8 percentage points respectively in the three months to December 2017, according to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA).

Industry data released by CA today revealed that Safaricom’s share of the voice traffic had dropped to 72.5 per cent in the three months to December 2017 down from 76.9 in the previous quarter.  Its market share by subscriptions dropped to 69.1 per cent compared to 71.9 per cent recorded during the previous quarter.

Airtel’s market share by voice traffic grew by 4.6 percent points to  22.2 per cent up from 17.4 per cent, while its market share by subscription rose to 17.2 per cent from 14.9 per cent recorded during the previous quarter.

During the same period, Telkom Kenya’s market share by subscription increased from 8.4 per cent to 9.0 per cent, posting a growth of 0.6 percentage points. On the other hand, Finserve Africa Limited lost by 0.2 percentage points to post a market share of 4.5 per cent.

“The total mobile voice traffic grew by 6.5 per cent to register 11.8 billion minutes from 11.0 billion minutes recorded in the previous period,” said CA in the report

Safaricom’s customers, however, increased their talk time, raising the minutes count to a total of 8.55 billion minutes of local mobile voice traffic during the quarter under review up from 8.51 billion minutes registered in the previous quarter.

Airtel’s total traffic volume increased to 2.5 billion minutes up from 1.9 billion minutes recorded in the previous quarter.

Telkom Kenya Limited on the other hand recorded a total of 608.6 million minutes in local mobile voice traffic up from 589.8 million minutes reported during the previous period.

Finserve Africa Limited recorded local mobile voice traffic of 37.5 million minutes during the quarter marking a decline of 7.2 per cent compared to 40.4 million minutes registered in the preceding quarter. Its voice market share was recorded at 0.3 percent.

During the period under review the Minutes of Use (MoU) per month per subscriber increased to 92.0 minutes up from 90.1 minutes recorded in the previous quarter.

As at 31st December 2017, the number of active mobile money transfer subscriptions and agents stood at 30.0 million and 198,234 respectively. A total of 607.4 million mobile money transfer transactions valued at Ksh. 1.763 trillion were carried. In addition there were 308.6 million mobile commerce transactions valued at Ksh.1.1 trillion. The value of person-to-person transfers amounted to Ksh. 596.4 million.

“The mobile money platform is expected to maintain an upward trend in the coming quarters due to the significant increase in the number of services offered on the platform and subsequently the increasing demand and popularity of the services,” CA says in the report.