Short Message Service (SMS) is still popular among Kenyans despite the increased popularity of data-based messaging services like WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, and Rich Communication Services (RCS).
This time-tested messaging service may have a character limit of 160, but it continues to be a widely used and dependable way to communicate. Importantly, SMS works seamlessly on virtually any mobile phone, making it a valuable tool in today’s diverse communication landscape.
Kenyans registered a high traffic growth of 14.1 billion messages from 12.2 billion messages. This traffic growth was recorded in the last quarter of 2023. The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) attributes the SMS traffic growth of 15.6 per cent to the long school holiday coupled with the festive season.
About 12.3 billion of the messages sent were on-net. Kenyans sent only 1.7 billion off-net messages.
Safaricom took the lion’s share of the traffic with 89.5%. The second largest player, Airtel had 10.4% of the traffic. This means Kenyans predominately use only two networks for SMS texts.
A recent survey by the CA found that WhatsApp was used by 47.3 per cent of Kenyans in the last quarter of the year. In addition, the country has seen a significant growth in smartphone users. Currently, Kenya has 33.6 million smartphones. This number is higher than the 31.8 million feature phones.
Still, the use of SMS persists. Regarding the holiday season, this could mean that businesses use bulk text services to market festive offers to their clients.
The spike during school holidays could indicate that many young Kenyans are still using feature phones. Data shows a consistent spike in months Kenyan schools are closed for holidays. This includes increased subscriptions to SMS bundles.
