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Safaricom cedes ground to rivals-CCK report

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Latest statistics from the Communication Commission of Kenya shows that even though all operators registered growth in subscription numbers, overall Safaricom share of the mobile telephony market declined by 1.3 percentage points while Essar, trading as yu; gained the largest market share of 0.8 percentage points.

Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile operator marginally lost market share by subscriber numbers to its rivals in the period ending March this year, new data from the industry regulator shows.

Latest statistics from the Communication Commission of Kenya shows that even though all operators registered growth in subscription numbers, overall Safaricom share of the mobile telephony market declined by 1.3 percentage points while Essar, trading as yu; gained the largest market share of 0.8 percentage points.

“This represents a decline in total net additions of 28.7 per cent, that may be attributed to reduced promotional and special offers which are strategies used for acquisition of new customers by the four mobile operators,” said CCK.

In terms of new subscriptions, yu posted the highest growth of 14.5 per cent, representing 324,284 new subscriptions; bringing its total customer base to 2.55 million users.

The highest gain in absolute values was recorded as 386,777 new subscriptions by Safaricom which represented a quarterly growth of 2.1 per cent. Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya gained 209,447 and 210,370 new subscriptions.

“The tremendous growth in the new subscriptions by Essar Telecom Kenya Limited could be attributed to increased promotional and special offers targeting the youth that were offered during the period,” said CCK in a statement. Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya slightly grew their share of the mobile market to 10.6 and 15.3 per cent respectively.

Kenya’s mobile penetration is now at 74 per cent, up from 71.3 per cent recorded at the end of December 2011; attributed to operators’ increased focus to offer competitive and innovative products and services to attract customers coupled with increasing demand from the population.

The report also shows that most Kenyans are accessing the Internet through mobile phones which accounts for 98.8 per cent of the total Internet and data subscriptions. The number of Internet users now stands at 11.8 million; a growth of 4.7 per cent from the 11.3 million users posted in December last year.