CCK quarterly sector statistics report for the second quarter 2011 is out. The report paints a very great picture of the growth being realised in the industry. CCK has announced that there was a growth of 12% in the mobile subscriber numbers in the last 3 months, from 22.3 Million to 24.96 Million. Fixed lines suffered a 0.8 per cent drop from 228,391 to 226,587 in the same period.
Safaricom market share dropped 6% from 75.9% to 69.9% and Essar (yu) lost 0.3% to stand at 6.4%. Airtel gained from 13.5% to 15.2% in the same period while Orange gained 4.5% of market share from 4.0% to stand at 8.5%.
The report goes further to state;
The quarter under review recorded 2,935,223 new mobile subscribers joining the four mobile operators in Kenya representing 12.0 per cent growth. With a subscription market share of 69.9 percent, Safaricom Limited remained on top of the three other operators and registered 736,777 new subscribers in its network between October and December 2010. Airtel with a market share of 15.2 percent is ranked second and had 814,708 new subscribers followed by Orange with a market share of 8.5 percent netting 972,928 new users within the quarter. Essar Telecom with a market share of 6.4 percent added 125,868 new subscribers to its network. The significant growth could be attributed to massive promotion and marketing activities by all the mobile operators a factor that could have contributed to increased subscriptions.
Minutes of Use per subscriber per month reduced by around one minute to 99.4 minutes from at 100.3 minutes in the previous quarter. This will make it hard to even believe the kind of offering which Safaricom is running for Post-Paid clients. Safaricom is giving upto 2,500 Safaricom to Safaricom minutes for 2,500 shillings per month.
The number of SMS sent is also declining standing at 665 million which is lower than 741 sent in the last quarter. Mobile internet subscription on GPRS/EDGE and 3G accounted for 99% of all internet subscriptions which now stands at 4.7 Million up from 3.5 Million. The CCK report puts the number of total internet subscribers at 10.2 Million up from 8.69 Million in the previous quarter. This translates to 25.9 % of Kenyans having internet connection up from the 22.1% figure.
The report lists Essar as having the second highest number of mobile internet subscribers after Safaricom. Safaricom has 2,977,584 subscribers which is 92.18% of total internet subscribers. Essar has 149,053 mobile internet subscribers which is just around 4.61%. The sleeping data giant which is Orange Kenya has 66,030 or 2.40% or the subscribers and is lying third.
You can read the whole report here and comment below on what you think about the CCK report figures. Are they realistic?
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