I think celebrations about Zain winning this one are premature.

For Zain to gain market leadership as their MD says, they have to be ready to sustain this price war for at least one year. Can they? I doubt it.

Remember:

1. The Kuwaiti's, with their infinite petro-dollar funded war chest failed.

2. Bharti is already in trouble back home and have practically admitted that the low margin 'minute-factory' model has run its course in India.

3. Safaricom is yet to utilize the full range of tools it has in its arsenal namely: a) the patriotism card a la EABL b) the fact that with over 12 million subscribers they can play the high volumes low margin game better than an upstart c) hostile advertising, especially with Zain about to re-brand, yet again! d) their deep pockets and the fact they have only one market to worry about

4. Any new subscribers that Zain attracts from Safaricom are likely to be low spenders (where the greater motive for moving is cost). This is the reason Safaricom is scrambling to protect its high value post paid customers and the high spending prepaid who are influenced more by value/convenience etc than price. The low spending clients who are jumping ship may be good for bragging rights. But this is not the kind of clientele you can rely on to build a high margin data business, many of them can't afford data - not to mention Safaricom is ahead on that front too.

What would I do different if I was Zain? I would borrow a leaf from the mother company and forget voice in Kenya - there is little new money in it. Attack Safaricom on the data front for that is where the money and the untapped market is. If Zain could do a game changer in Data - say, by forcing ISP's to lower their costs to less obscene levels, they would earn my respect and my custom for both data and voice.

My 3 bob worth.

Wakanyugi, I didnt read the rest of your analysis and paralysis .I just wonder why any mobile tel consumer would be complaining when charges go down unless you have vested interest in the rival company making immoral profits by overcharging poor mortals.

@vin
Kuishi kwingi ni kuona mengi.

Experience is the best teacher. I have experienced and learnt much.

@Guru.
Common sense.
Swaleh has no patent for story telling, why the child cry?. I have seen much under the sun, seat under my table for basic lessons.
Penye wazee hapaharibiki neno

Man, I used to hate swa lessons in high school!!

I hope investors were clever enough to sell...

After Mouse tells Cat "Bend Over", It is still too early to say if Safaricom ARPU will drop but definitely user minutes per month will raise from 75minutes, depending on how much the low end users increase their use, ARPU may even raise, after two weeks of this price war of which Zain had a major head-start, Safaricoms market share has dropped approx 1.5% from 80% to 78.5%, if users increase their calls due to lower prices, 2/- per minute, then their revenues may not be much affected as ARPU will remain stable or even rise, whilst the 300K customers who switched to Zain and YU may return to safcom with others as we saw with Vuka. Stanbic has changed Safaricom to HOLD, most good analyst will soon revert to BUY/OVERWEIGHT, I expect latest November. I think Morgan Stanly give the best analysis.
READ SOME HERE & HERE

The story is different for Zain:-

After a Kenyan corporate history loss making KES 7.3 billion (USD 90million) over its past financial year, Zain is at it again, promising to make an even bigger loss with its reckless antics in another futile effort to become Safaricom. I believe there is space for growth for Zain rather than self destruction. Zain is an important player in the economy but with yet another imminent huge loss, the worst is yet to come.

Lets burst some myths

Myths:
• Bharti airtell is willing to “squander” another 12 billion to 25 billion to prop Zain Kenya, Bharti worldwide reported a profit of 1.6Billion USD, for the past financial year from its Indian Market with 150million subscribers, to say they are ready to pour 1/6th of this amount in a Kenyan operation that has about 2million customers (or even an optimistic 10million) is delusional. I think Sunil Mittal (Bharti Airtel is literally a one man show though it is partially owned by Vodafone) knows better (simple business logic, don’t throw good money after bad money), Zain Kenya may well be likely be up for sale following another loss this October. Note Airtell (Zain Africa) has market leadership in majority of African operations.
• Calls are profitable at 3per Min across Networks. Suppose Zain enrolls a new 3 million customers and reports a better ARPU, knowing about a 1/3rd of voice revenue goes back to distribution (more so for Zain due to volumes) and where it has being paying a 4.22/- cross network charge for 3 weeks now (leaving a negative revenue of -1.22/- for every call below one minute) and 2.2/- for the rest of the year for the first minute giving a revenue of .80/cents for any call below one minute, clearly Zain is taking major losses as it made the losses at 7.50/- per minute across networks last year, with a bigger subscriber base.

Whats your take?

Boss, question 1,2 ok... question 3 is laden with fallacies..

As to the answers:

1,2. Impossible to tell in the short term... Whatever figures are filed with CCK at the end of the registration period will comprise of Persons who may have moved from Safaricom but will still appear in Safcom's register as the 120 day period is not yet over... The price-sensitive subscribers who moved to Zain and switched back as soon as the Safcom price was dropped will appear in Zain's list... so give it some time... Any time before 4 months is too soon to tell.
3. Additional revenue??? Boss even if 2 million people have moved to Zain that leaves 15 million in Safcom so u can imagine the percentage of cross network calls favouring Safcom... In all probability, for the period before 1st September (tommorrow) Zain's losses increased not their revenues.

Btw, whatever happened to our Princeton educated, fast talking, billionaire-extrodinaire, philanthropic, blue-eyed boy? AMA kazi ya ku blog for telcom companies iliisha?!

zain never expected safcon to pull such a fast one. i didnt too. this game is smoking!!. zain pulled a killer punch and safcon responded with a tyson, hehehe!! who benefits?? u know. i have a two fons so immediately zain announced their offer my preferred network changed to zain, but then safcon gave a sweeter deal of 2bob n seeing that most of my fonbook is safcon my preferred network is again safcon.

lets face it, the only beneficiary so far is the end user. shareholders (both safcon and zain) watajiongelesha. zain is unlikely to gain much, not coz they made a wrong move (it was a killer move!) but coz safcon reacted in good time. just when will they move the war to the data arena...cant wait???? hehe

Hiyo ya data itakuwa Orange versus Safcom...