Kenya says mobile users, revenues up; ARPU declines

By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan mobile phone subscribers and revenues grew in 2009 but the average income per user fell, despite a higher use of data, statistics by the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) showed on Friday.

Subscriber numbers were up 19.3 percent to 19.4 million, raising market penetration to 49.7 percent, and total revenues by the industry's four players grew by 16 percent to 84.2 billion shillings.

The average revenue per user (ARPU) fell to 362.20 shillings from 376.56 shillings, which Andre Wills, a telecoms analyst at Africa Analysis in Johannesburg, said was a small drop compared with what other operators regionally had experienced.

"That's still pretty healthy growth for Kenya and what it is showing is that the operators are entering to the lower income groups, hence the decline in ARPU," he said.

"What's important about that is that it will take some time for the consumption of data to provide more robust support of revenue per subscriber."

CCK said mobile data subscribers leapt over 400 percent to 1.98 million users from 398,190 in the year ago period.

Analysts' general view of ARPU in Africa is that it would continue to drop as operators extend their reach to lower income bracket users and they have to find more cost-effective ways of providing services to maintain profits.

CCK said in a quarterly bulletin that the growth in users could be explained by a reduction in the cost of mobile handsets as well as the low value of prepaid calling cards.