Kenya Now Has 46.6 Million Active Mobile Customers

Kenya’s mobile penetration has increased by 2.3 percent in the three months to September to hit 100 percent for the first time ever from 97.8 percent in the previous quarter.

Mobile penetration now stands at 46.6 million active customer subscriptions making Kenya join the league of African countries like Morocco, Namibia, and Tunisia that have achieved the threshold.

According to CA, increased mobile penetration was as a result of mobile phone users owning more than one SIM card either from the same or different service provider.

The value of mobile commerce grew by 8.8 percent to 1.552 trillion shillings during the three months as the value of mobile money transfers rose 5.6 percent to 2.027 trillion shillings.

The number of active mobile subscribers rose 2.4 percent from 45.5 million in the previous quarter to 46.6 million, is the same as the estimated population in the country.

CA expects this penetration to continue growing as network expansion continues.

The statistics showed that Airtel Kenya’s share of voice market almost tripled to 33.3 percent in the 18 months to September 2018.

Airtel’s network reported an increase of 13.8 percent in local mobile voice traffic to 4.7 billion minutes in the period from 4.2 billion minutes recorded in the preceding quarter.

The telco commanded just 12.1 percent of voice market at the end of March 2017 compared with Safaricom’s 82 percent.

Safaricom lost its share of the voice market over the past five quarters to settle at 62.1 percent at the end of September 2018.

The CA data shows that total mobile voice traffic originating from Safaricom network dropped 2.4 percent to 8.9 billion minutes from 9.1 billion minutes reported the previous quarter – a shift that has been attributed to the coming to an end of the firm’s voice call promotion.

During this period, the voice market share of Telkom Kenya dropped from 5.3 percent to 4.3 percent despite the company registering a 15.6 percent growth in talk time to 619.3 million minutes.