Safaricom subcriber marketshare drops marginally as rivals gain

Safaricom has lost a part of the subscribers' marketshare to its rival Airtel following its failure to attract new subscribers.

Latest data from the industry regulator, Communications Commission of Kenya, shows that Safaricom controlled 64 per cent of the market in June compared to 65.3 per cent at end of March this year, while Airtel grew its share by 1.2 percentage points to 16.5 per cent.

This follows 430,726 of the total 559,509 new mobile subscribers during the three months choosing Airtel compared to Safaricom loss of 67,719 subscribers.

The other two mobile operators had mixed fortunes with Essar growing its market share to nine per cent from 8.7 per cent while Telkom lost 0.1 percentage point to 10.5 per cent.

However Airtel’s gain did not reflect in voice traffic as its share in airwaves control dropped by two per cent while Safaricom retained its share, Essar gained marginally to 9.1 per cent while Telkom remained flat at 0.8 per cent.

“Safaricom continues to have the largest market share by voice traffic since a large percentage of off-net traffic from other networks terminates to Safaricom network. This also implies Safaricom’s market share by revenue exceeds its market shares by subscription and traffic because its voice tariffs particularly off-net tariffs are higher than the industry average,” said the regulator in its quarterly report.

Downward trend
The minutes of use made by each subscriber per month continued on a downward trend with an average of 71.2 minutes recorded for the quarter compared to 77.7 minutes in the previous quarter of January to March. This was attributed to a decline in mobile traffic.

During the quarter, a total of 986 million Short Messaging Service (SMS) were sent compared to 1.0 billion SMS sent the previous quarter. This represents a decline of 3.6 per cent.

The number of internet subscriptions went up by 19.2 per cent between March and June to 7.7 million users. The growth was attributed to competitive data tariffs, special offers and promotions offered by the operators during the period and increased uptake of mobile data services.

Internet penetration in the country rose to 35.5 per cent from 30 per cent with 14 million estimated users.