The country’s mobile phone subscriptions grew by 5.6 percent over the last one year to stand at 32.2 million at the end of the 2013/2014 financial year fourth quarter, translating into a mobile penetration level of 79.2 percent.
The number of new subscriptions registered during the period was 416,390 with the growth attributed to increasing demand for various mobile services and value added services across the country.
Safaricom still holds the largest market share at 68 percent with over 21.9 million subscribers followed by Airtel Kenya at 16 percent market share with over five million subscribers.
However Kenyans are talking less and sending more text messages on their mobile phones according to the statistics .
Data released by the Communications Authority of Kenya shows that mobile phone users sent a total of 24.4 billion short messages in the year through June, up from 13.2 billion texts the previous year, representing an 85 per cent increase.
In the three months to June alone, 6.8 billion text messages were sent, a 10 per cent rise from the previous quarter.
Time spent talking on phone declined by four per cent to 7.3 billion minutes compared to 7.6 billion minutes in the last quarter.
“The growth in short messages could be attributed to the bundle SMS promotions by service providers,” CA said in a statement.
According to the report, the number of mobile money transfer subscriptions declined by 0.5 percent to reach 26.6 million down from 26.7 million recorded in the previous quarter while the number of agents grew by 4.8 percent to reach 109,286 from 104,323 agents recorded during the previous quarter.
The number of Internet users increased by 3 percent to post 22.3 million users up from 21.6 million owing to increase in Internet subscription that grew by 5 percent to reach 14 million from 13.3 million.
AUTHOR:BEN GUMO