Kenya’s smartphone growth and mobile data use continued at a brisk pace in the fourth quarter of the 2025/26 financial year, with the number of smartphones connected to mobile networks reaching 52.26 million by the end of June 2026.
The Communications Authority of Kenya recorded a 4.2 percent increase from 50.18 million smartphones in March, while feature-phone connections fell 3.9 percent to 27.42 million.
The figures point to a mobile market where the type of device people carry is changing alongside the networks they use. Across the two categories, Kenya had 79.68 million connected mobile devices at the end of June, giving smartphones a 65.6 percent share of the device base. The smartphone count has therefore moved further ahead of feature phones in a quarter when the overall number of connected devices grew only modestly.
Smartphones are replacing feature phones
The latest figures extend a pattern already 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. Three months later, the smartphone base had added another 2.09 million connections, while the feature-phone base lost 1.11 million.
The Communications Authority attributes the growth in smartphone uptake to the expansion of 4G and 5G networks. That relationship is important because the change in devices also changes what a mobile connection can support. A smartphone provides access to applications, video, cloud services, digital payments and other internet-based services that depend on a persistent data connection, making the device itself an important part of Kenya’s broadband story.
The transition is happening even as the cost and availability of smartphones remain important market considerations. Earlier TechTrendsKE reporting has tracked the growth of smartphone financing and the pressure on affordable devices, while the regulator has also introduced tighter requirements around communications equipment and consumer protection. The installed base reported by the CA, however, shows that smartphones now account for nearly two-thirds of connected mobile devices.
Mobile broadband is growing alongside the device base
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 the annual increase in mobile data subscriptions was 9.7 percent, from 58.6 million in June 2025.
The relationship between the two figures is worth noting. Mobile broadband accounted for 85.5 percent of mobile data subscriptions at the end of June, according to the CA, with 4G remaining the most widely adopted broadband technology. Data consumption on both 4G and 5G networks continued to rise during the quarter, while consumption on 3G continued to fall.
That puts the smartphone figure in a wider context. Kenya is adding more internet-capable devices while the networks carrying their traffic are also moving toward faster technologies. The result is a mobile market in which the growth of the handset base and the growth of broadband access are occurring together, rather than as separate developments.
The broader network picture has been changing as well. Earlier measurements cited by TechTrendsKE showed average mobile internet speeds rising sharply during 2025, while CA data has continued to show the movement of subscribers away from older network technologies. For operators, the issue is therefore no longer simply how many devices are connected, but how much traffic those devices generate and what network capacity is required to support it.
4G remains the workhorse as 5G passes two million
The 5G market is growing quickly, although it remains much smaller than the 4G base. CA data shows that 5G subscriptions reached about 2.1 million by June, up from roughly 1.2 million a year earlier. 4G remained the dominant technology, with about 48 million subscriptions.
The consumption figures make the difference between the two technologies more interesting. Average monthly data consumption was about 64.4GB per 5G subscription during the quarter, compared with 15.8GB on 4G and 8.3GB on 3G, according to the CA data reported after the release of the Q4 statistics.
Those numbers should not be read as meaning that the typical Kenyan smartphone user consumes 64GB of data each month. The 5G figure describes average consumption among subscriptions using that technology, and the 5G customer base is still a small portion of the wider mobile broadband market.
It does, however, show why the migration toward faster networks matters. A subscriber using 5G consumes considerably more data on average than one using 4G or 3G, while the overall number of smartphones and broadband connections continues to grow. Video, cloud applications, large downloads, conferencing and other bandwidth-heavy activities can all make greater use of the capacity available on newer networks.
Voice and SMS remain large, but usage patterns are changing
The growth of mobile data has not made voice calls or SMS insignificant. Kenyans generated 33.01 billion minutes of domestic mobile voice traffic in the April-to-June quarter, up 2.2 percent from 32.31 billion minutes in the preceding quarter. Domestic SMS traffic also edged higher, from 13.98 billion messages to 14.12 billion.
The annual picture is more revealing. Domestic mobile voice traffic reached 126.7 billion minutes during the 2025/26 financial year, up 13.6 percent from 111.6 billion minutes the previous year. SMS traffic went in the opposite direction, falling 0.3 percent to 57.1 billion messages.
The CA attributes 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.
That gives a more useful picture than describing voice and SMS as disappearing. Both remain substantial services, but the smartphone has placed them alongside a much wider set of data-based communications. A person can make a conventional call, send an SMS, use an internet calling service, exchange messages through an app and consume video from the same device and mobile connection.
A more data-heavy mobile market
The Q4 figures show a Kenyan mobile market that is growing in both scale and capability. Smartphone connections rose by more than two million in three months, mobile broadband added another 2.07 million subscriptions, and total mobile data subscriptions passed 64 million.
At the same time, feature phones continued to decline and 3G data consumption fell as 4G and 5G traffic increased. The contrast is clearest at the device level: by June, Kenya had 52.26 million smartphones connected to mobile networks against 27.42 million feature phones.
The numbers also put the next stage of competition in a different context for operators. Safaricom held 69.8 percent of mobile subscriptions and 64.4 percent of mobile broadband subscriptions at the end of June, while Airtel remained the other major mobile network operator. As smartphone adoption grows and customers consume more data, network performance, coverage, pricing and the ability to support heavier traffic become increasingly important alongside subscriber acquisition.
The CA’s figures are supply-side statistics based on returns from licensed operators and service providers, so they should not be interpreted as a direct count of individual Kenyans using smartphones. Multiple SIMs and connections can belong to the same person, and the Authority notes that its sector report does not contain demand-side household data.
Even with that qualification, the direction of the market is clear in the latest quarter. Kenya’s mobile ecosystem is becoming more dependent on smartphones and broadband connectivity, while voice and SMS remain significant services within a much larger data environment.
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