The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) ‘s latest data reports that Safaricom’s share of mobile subscribers plunged to 63.5 percent in the full year ended June, recording the lowest market share in the last decade. Its market share last year was 65.4 percent. At the same time its rival Airtel steadily grew its customer base.
Though Safaricom has the highest number of subscribers at 31.8 million, its voice market shares and overall customer base has been declining over the years. Airtel’s subscriber base increased by 3.1 million to 12.8 million in the full year to June, with it’s market share soaring to a record 24.6 percent.
Airtel achieved this substantial growth through smart marketing like sustained cheaper tariffs in a year. It launched the lowest call rates iAirtel in December last year and also introduced a two-month promotional tariff that allowed its customers make calls at a rate of Sh1 per minute to all other networks and free on-net calls over the holidays. This was the lowest rate offered in the industry.Its voice traffic grew as it increased the talk-time on its platform by nearly 10 percentage points while Safaricom shrank the total number of minutes spent on voice calls by 3.4 percentage points.
Telkom Kenya, is also exploring merging of their its operations with Airtel .It has the third-highest market share. if successful, such a move is expected to increase competition for Safaricom.
