Safaricom and Airtel have lost a slight portion of their market share to Telkom Kenya which has recorded an increase in its total mobile subscriptions by 18.5 per cent.
The increase, represents at least 600,000 new subscribers in a period of three months.
According to the first quarter sector statistics report of 2017/2018 from the Communications Authority, Safaricom market share dropped from 72.6 per cent to 71.9 per cent while that of Airtel dropped from 15.3 per cent to 14.9 per cent as at September 2017. On the other hand, Telkom Kenya's market share went up to 8.4 per cent from 7.2 per cent.
This means, that the two mobile operators lost at least 450,000 customers to Telkom in a period of three months.
During the period, the number of mobile subscriptions stood at 41 million, up from 40.2 million reported in the preceding quarter, marking a growth of 1.9 per cent over the period.
Subsequently, mobile penetration rose 1.7 percentage points to reach 90.4 per cent, from 88.7 per cent recorded during the previous quarter.
The authority attributed the rapid growth of Telkom subscribers to the customer acquisition campaign they carried out in mid-2017 following its rebranding from Orange Kenya to Telkom Kenya.
While Safaricom and Airtel posted a marginal decline in market share, Airtel also registered a dip of at least 1.2 per cent in its total mobile subscription to stand at 6.10 million from 6.17 million recorded during a similar period last year.
On the other hand, Safaricom voice market share also declined by 2.7 per cent to stand at 76.9 per cent despite an increase in voice traffic from 10.6 billion to 11 billion in the period under review.
Airtel voice went up by 3 per cent to stand at 17.4 per cent. Telkom market share dropped by 0.3 per cent to stand at 5.3 per cent.
While at that, the report shows that only Safaricom posted an increase in short messaging service market share to stand at 97 per cent up from 95.9 per cent recorded in the previous quarter.
Airtel and Telkom registered a one and 0.1 per cent dip respectively in the SMS market share despite over 19.3 billion texts sent over the last three months, up from 15.2 billion registered last quarter.
As the trend on voice and SMS market share seem to be fluctuating, the authority noted an increasing trend in the value of mobile money transactions with Kenyans sending and withdrawing a total of Sh 1.7 trillion in the last three months.
This is a 36.2 per cent increase from the Sh1.2 trillion transacted in the last quarter.