Nairobi, March 13 -- Kenya's second-largest telco Airtel Kenya has chipped away at Safaricom's dominance in four out of the six major battlefronts including voice, mobile data and SMS markets over the past five years as the loss-making firm closes the gap amid a vicious fight for control of the local mobile phone services.

An analysis of data shows Safaricom's dominance in voice shrunk to 65.9 percent by December 2022 from a record high of 80.6 percent five years ago while its mobile internet market dropped to 65 percent from 72.8 percent in the period.

Airtel's share of the voice market more than doubled to 32.2 percent in December last year from 13.5 percent five years ago while its share of mobile data hit 27.9 percent from 18.5 perc...