Equitel registers 23% Growth in Subscribers as Mobile Penetration in Kenya hits 88.1% of Population

The Communications Authority of Kenya has released Q1 sector statistics report for the financial year 2015/2016 (July-September 2015). In the report, the CA highlights the continued growth of the ICT sector in various facets including mobile telephony, internet coverage, registered domains and courier services.

In the report, the CA notes that mobile telephony subscriptions grew by 4.7% equated to 1.7 million mobile subscriptions to hit 37.8 Million up from 36.7 million registered users. Subsequently, mobile penetration grew from 83.9% recorded last quarter to 88.1% from 83.9% during the period under review.

In terms of market share, the two largest mobile phone operators registered declines in terms of market share. Safaricom shed off 0.7% of its market share to 66.3% from 67% last quarter. Safaricom is then followed by Airtel with 19.1% of the market share. This represented a decline of 0.3%. Orange Kenya saw its share increase to 11.8%. Recent entrant into the market Equitel saw its market share edge up to 2.9% of the 37.8 Million subscriptions.

In spite of the declines in market share, Safaricom registered 3.8% growth in mobile subscribers to 25.1 Million subs. Of the 25.1 Million, 23.3 Million were on Pre-paid with 833,818 on Post Pay tariffs. Airtel saw its subscribers grow to 7.2 Million from 6.8 Million subscribers. Pre-paid subscribers on Airtel were 7.1 Million with post-pay subs at 146,873 subscribers. Perhaps the most interesting was the growth of Equitel, which registered 24.3% growth in subscribers to 1,085,869 all on pre-paid. Orange saw its subscribers grow to 4.4 Million from 4 Million. Its post-pay subscribers declined to 9,198 from 11,264. France Telcom Orange recently offloaded its 70% stake in Orange to Helios Investment partners with the deal set to be concluded in the first quarter of 2016.