This archive report was first published on 29 September 2019.
Safaricom's dominance in the Kenyan mobile market has been eroded, with its market share falling to 63.5 percent in the year ended June 2019, according to data from the Communications Authority of Kenya.
This marks the lowest level of market share for Safaricom in the last decade, as rival Airtel has been steadily gaining ground.
Although Safaricom still has the highest number of subscribers at 31.8 million, its voice market share and overall customer base have been shrinking over the years.
By contrast, Airtel has seen a significant increase in its subscriber base, with 3.1 million new customers added in the year ended June, bringing its total to 12.8 million.
This growth has led to Airtel's market share climbing to 24.6 percent, its highest ever.
The last time Safaricom's market share was this low was in the 2011/12 period, when it stood at 64 percent.
Airtel's rise in market share can be attributed to its sustained cheaper tariffs, including a promotional offer launched in December 2018 that allowed customers to make calls at the lowest industry rate of Sh1 per minute to all other networks.
As a result, Airtel has seen a significant increase in voice traffic, with a 73 percent growth in total voice calls to 21.5 billion minutes for both on-net and off-net calls.
Meanwhile, Safaricom has seen a decline in the total number of minutes spent on voice calls, with a 3.4 percentage point drop.
With Telkom Kenya in the process of merging its operations with Airtel, the competition for Safaricom is expected to increase.
