Opera Software has just released their latest “State of the Mobile Report” that looks at how users of their Opera Mini web browser interacted with the internet. With Opera Mini, users type in a URL and then said web site is rendered on a server in some distant land, compressed by up to 90%, and then sent back to your phone. Advantages to this model include: cheaper data, if you’re unfortunate enough to be paying per megabyte or have an incredibly small data bucket, you also get to view advanced websites on older hardware, since you no longer need a lot of processing power to render the rich complexity of today’s web, and the best advantage is of course speed. Browsing faster due to less data usage = less time your screen is on, less time your modem spends grabbing data, more time to get back to life. Anyway, here are the facts and figures from the December 2010 report:
- Opera Mini now has over 85.5 million users, a 6.8% increase from the previous month and up 84.7% year on year.
- Users viewed over 46.7 billion pages in December 2010, up 4.6% from the previous month and up 125.5% year on year.
- Users consumed over 689,450 GB of data, up 4.3% compared to the previous month and up 124.1% year on year.
- The amount of people, globally, going to Amazon.com increased almost every month in 2010, but it was the US and Germany where it really blew up. In Germany, the number of users visiting Amazon.com went from 3% to just over 8% between January and December. In America there was a massive spike, pictured above, in users visiting Amazon.com, as well as in terms of page views.
Remember to grab Opera Mini, regardless of your mobile phone, because it runs on just about damn near everything except for Windows Phone 7.