This archive report was first published on 27 September 2019.
Published on September 27, 2019, a report by the Communication Authority revealed that voice services were the largest contributor to Kenya's mobile sector revenue in 2018, accounting for 39% of the total revenue.
Mobile money services followed closely, generating 33% of the total revenue through transfer services. Data and Short Message services (SMS) contributed the least, bringing in 20% and 8% respectively.
Safaricom held the largest share of the sectoral voice revenue, leading with 85.4%. Airtel followed with 9.4%, while Telkom and Finserve Africa trailed at 4.9% and 0.4% respectively.
However, the report noted that while voice services still contribute significantly to Kenya's mobile sector revenues, relying on them for income is not sustainable in the long term. Global trend data shows a decline in the preference for voice services as customers increasingly opt for instant messaging apps and Voice over Internet Protocol (VolP) services.
Quarterly trends also show a decline in the volume of voice traffic. For instance, Safaricom PLC recorded a decrease in voice traffic from 9.8 billion minutes in Q1 2019 to 9.19 billion minutes in Q2. Similarly, Finserve's voice traffic fell from 33.2 million minutes in Q1 2019 to 30.9 million minutes in Q2 2019.
