Opera Software says that Opera Mini has further asserted its claim as the world's most popular mobile Web browser, as usage increased more than 10%, according to Opera's State of the Mobile Web report for August 2009. Opera claims that more than 31.9 million people use Opera Mini to browse the Web from their mobile phones and, in August, it gained at least one new user every second, it is claimed.
The report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, the report highlights trends in Europe and examines countries that may soon become world leaders in mobile Web usage.
Global trendsAccording to the report, in August 2009, more than 31.9 million people used Opera Mini, a 9.9% increase from July 2009 and more than 147% compared to August 2008. Those 31.9 million people viewed over 13.9 billion pages in August 2009. Since July, page-views have gone up 15.7%. Since August 2008, page-views have increased 234%. Opera Mini users generated nearly 209 million MB of data worldwide in August. Since July, the data consumed went up by 11.7%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed by up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 1.9 PB of data in August. Since August 2008, data traffic is up 222%.
The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, Nigeria, United Kingdom and Poland. There is no change to the top 10 countries this month.
Trends in Europe
The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Europe (not including the global top 10 countries) are Germany, France, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands, Slovakia, Lithuania and Romania.
On growth rates in Europe, Turkey leads the top 10 countries with 218.8% growth in users this year, followed by France (100.7% growth) and Czech Republic (72.2% growth). As in several other regions around the world, Google and Facebook are popular among mobile Web users in Europe, surpassed only occasionally by country-specific search engines and social-networking sites. Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets are ubiquitous in Europe, followed by a few popular Samsung and LG devices.
The report says that, although the top 10 did not change this month, within the top 30 countries, several countries have exhibited rapidly accelerating user growth and may soon crack the top 10. Usage in Vietnam, currently ranked 11, grew an impressive 20% month-over-month. The Philippines, Kenya and France also stand close to displacing some of the countries in the top 10.
Over the past month, the fastest growing countries for Opera Mini usage within the top 30 are Australia (52% since July 2009), Georgia (34%), Vietnam (20%), Kenya (19%), France (16%), Philippines (15%), Brazil (14%), Kazakhstan (13%), Pakistan (11%) and Malaysia (10%).
"Opera Mini proves that the key to sustained growth of the mobile Web is a capable browser," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "We work hard to ensure that Opera Mini works on almost every mobile phone because we are on a mission to bring the Web to the world, and the mobile phone is the world's most prevalent communications device. It is a question of when – not if – most people will access the Web with a mobile device, and Opera Mini is ready to help them get to that content quickly and affordably."