Kenya had 52.26 million smartphones connected to mobile networks by the end of June 2026, continuing strong smartphone growth and rising mobile data use in the fourth quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, the Communications Authority of Kenya reported.
Smartphones outpace feature phones
The CA recorded a 4.2 percent increase in smartphone connections from 50.18 million in March to 52.26 million in June, while feature-phone connections fell 3.9 percent to 27.42 million. Across both device categories, Kenya had 79.68 million connected mobile devices at the end of June, giving smartphones a 65.6 percent share of the installed base.
Smartphone growth continued a pattern visible in the previous quarter: between January and March smartphone connections rose from 48.73 million to 50.18 million while feature phones declined from 29.62 million to 28.53 million. In the three months to June the smartphone base added a further 2.09 million connections and the feature-phone base lost 1.11 million.
The CA attributes the shift toward smartphones to the expansion of 4G and 5G networks, noting that smartphones enable access to applications, video, cloud services, digital payments and other internet-based services that depend on persistent data connections.
Mobile broadband and data subscriptions
Mobile broadband subscriptions reached 54.93 million in June, up 3.9 percent from 52.85 million in March. Total mobile data subscriptions rose 2.6 percent over the same period to 64.26 million, and were 9.7 percent higher year-on-year from 58.6 million in June 2025. At the end of June mobile broadband accounted for 85.5 percent of mobile data subscriptions, with 4G remaining the most widely adopted broadband technology.
Data consumption on 4G and 5G networks increased during the quarter while consumption on 3G continued to fall, a trend the CA highlighted alongside the growing base of internet-capable devices.
4G remains dominant as 5G passes two million
The 5G market expanded quickly but remained much smaller than 4G: CA data show about 2.1 million 5G subscriptions by June, up from roughly 1.2 million a year earlier, while 4G subscriptions numbered about 48 million.
Average monthly data consumption differed markedly by technology: about 64.4GB per 5G subscription, 15.8GB on 4G and 8.3GB on 3G. The CA cautioned that the 5G average describes consumption among subscriptions using that technology and does not necessarily represent the typical Kenyan smartphone user.
Voice, SMS and operator shares
Kenyans generated 33.01 billion minutes of domestic mobile voice traffic in April–June, up 2.2 percent from 32.31 billion minutes in the preceding quarter. Domestic SMS traffic edged higher from 13.98 billion messages to 14.12 billion.
Over the 2025/26 financial year domestic mobile voice traffic reached 126.7 billion minutes, up 13.6 percent from 111.6 billion minutes the previous year. SMS traffic fell 0.3 percent year-on-year to 57.1 billion messages; the CA attributed the annual SMS decline mainly to greater use of over-the-top messaging services such as WhatsApp.
On a per-subscription basis, average monthly voice use fell from 128.1 minutes in Q3 to 125.1 minutes in Q4, while average monthly SMS use declined from 55.4 messages to 53.5. Safaricom held 69.8 percent of mobile subscriptions and 64.4 percent of mobile broadband subscriptions at the end of June, with Airtel remaining the other major mobile network operator.
Supply-side data and market implications
The CA’s figures are supply-side statistics based on returns from licensed operators and service providers and should not be interpreted as a direct headcount of individual smartphone users; multiple SIMs and connections can belong to the same person. Even with that qualification, the quarter’s numbers show a market adding more internet-capable devices while the networks carrying their traffic shift toward faster technologies, making network performance, coverage, pricing and capacity increasingly central alongside subscriber acquisition.
