Earlier today the Communications Authority of Kenya emailed me their quarterly sector statistics report for the period January 2014 to March 2014, which is also the third quarter of their financial year. As usual, the report serves to provide key insights on Kenya’s communications sector with in-depth details from top to bottom. That being said, if you are interested in seeing the whole thing you can download it here: CommunicationsAuthoityOfKenyaKenyaQ32014Statistics.

However, for purposes of this blog post, here are the key highlights from my perspective:

• Kenya now has 31.8 million mobile subscribers, up from 31.3 million mobile subscribers the previous quarter. This means that mobile penetration in Kenya now stands at an all time high of 78.2% as of March 2014.
• Safaricom is the largest mobile network in Kenya with 67.8% market share as a result of having 21,248,287 mobile subscribers. Airtel is the second largest mobile network in Kenya with 16.5% market share as a result of having 5,156,269 mobile subscribers. YU is the third largest mobile network in Kenya with 8% market share as a result of having 2,649,362 mobile subscribers. Orange (Telkom Kenya) is the fourth largest mobile network in Kenya with % market share as a result of having 2,255,099 mobile subscribers.
• Mobile money subscriptions in Kenya now stand at an impressive 26.2 million subscribers, up from 26 million subscribers in the previous quarter,.
• Kenya now also has 103,660 mobile money agents countrywide which is an increase of 10.6% from the previous quarter.
• SMS traffic declined to 6.22 billion messages from 6.28 billion in the previous quarter. Could this be as a result of the rise of mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp? I see this trend continuing based on how many people have opted out of SMS for free Internet-based mobile messaging services.
• Voice traffic dropped from 7.8 to 7.6 billion minutes between the two quarters. In addition, average voice minutes used per subscriber also fell from 84.1 minutes to 80.3 minutes.
• Fixed lines declined 205,856 lines to 204,354 from the previous quarter. Do people still use these? I rarely ever call landlines these days unless I have to.
• Internet subscriptions grew by 200,000 from 13.1 million subscribers to 13.3 million showing the robust uptake of data services in Kenya driven largely around mobile which represents 99% of Internet usage. However DSL and fibre optic subscriptions grew by 4.4% and 2.8% per cent respectively.
• The number of Internet users increased to 21.6 million compared to 21.2 million during the last quarter. This means that Internet penetration in Kenya now stands at 53.3% up from 52.3% the previous quarter. This is a stunning level of uptake whichever way you look at it. Kenya is mobile-first and increasingly Internet-first too!
• Broadband Internet penetration in Kenya now stands at 1.44 million compared to 1.41 million the previous quarter. This means that the majority of Internet users in Kenya are still on slower Internet connections and broadband uptake is still a work in progress.
• International Internet bandwidth increased to 865,714Mbps up from 862,473.9Mbps. However, used international bandwidth grew substantially by 22.3% to stand at 447,064 Mbps up from 365,413 Mbps recorded in the last quarter. Total used capacity represented 51.6% compared to last quarter’s 42.4%.
• .KE domain names grew by an impressive 9.1% to stand at 33,381 .KE domain names up from 30,585 .KE domain names.

You can also download the report in its entirety here: CommunicationsAuthoityOfKenyaKenyaQ32014Statistics