NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 20 – Safaricom added 669,594 new mobile subscribers pushing the operator’s market share to a multi-year high of 68.9 percent.
The 2016 Q3 numbers released by the Communications Authority of Kenya, however, show the number of mobile phone subscribers went down by 3 percent on account of alignment of reporting by Orange to the regulatory requirement of only listing active subscribers.
As a result, mobile penetration dropped to 87.3 percent from 90 percent in the 2nd Quarter of last year.
After two straight quarters of decline in subscribers, Airtel added 178,840 to its numbers improving market share to 17.5 percent from 16.6 percent in the previous quarter.
Total internet subscriptions declined by 4.5 percent compared to Q2 to 25.7m with mobile data subscriptions accounting for 99.5 percent of total subscriptions. Of the total mobile data subscriptions, Safaricom had the highest market share at 63.2 percent followed by Airtel at 21.2 percent. With regards to mobile money subscriptions, Safaricom maintained the highest market share at 66.4pc.