Opera has just published their latest issue of their “State of the Mobile Web” report that highlights browsing trends and behaviors using data collected from their nearly 60 million Opera Mini users. Since a web page rendered in Opera Mini first goes to a remote server, where it is then compressed by up to 90% before being sent back down to the handset, a rich set of data can be collected. And so with the background out of the way, let’s look at some statistics:
- Opera Mini had over 59.4 million users, a 3.2% decrease from May 2010 but an increase of 124.7% since June 2009. Reason for the decrease? “Certain countries … have experienced some technical and political challenges that now are about to be solved.”
- Opera Mini users viewed over 27.3 billion pages in June 2010. Down 3.4% since May 2010, but up 161.8% since the same month last year.
- Opera Mini users generated over 396.7 TB of data, down by 4.0% since May 2010, but up 147.1% since June 2009.
- Some stats for just the USA: 145.2% more pages rendered year over year, 98.8% more users year over year, typically 275 pages rendered per user per month or roughly 7 MB per month. The most popular device using Opera Mini? Apple’s iPhone [check out this video comparing Opera Mini on the iPhone to the native browser]. Out of the 10 devices in America using Opera Mini, BlackBerry devices occupy 7 spots. The Samsung Instinct S30 is the 4th most popular, and Nokia’s 5130 is the 9th most popular.
June’s issue focuses on the continent of Africa, thanks to South Africa who hosted the 2010 World Cup. The top 10 countries in Africa using Opera Mini are (in order): South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, and Namibia. Sudan and Ghana stand out with 4,645.6% and 916.5% growth in page views year over year, respectively, along with a 1,225.0% and 498.8% growth in users year over year, respectively. People in Kenya are the most hard core web surfers in Africa, cramming an average of 639 web pages per month.
Out of the top 10 devices being used by South Africans to surf the web using Opera Mini, 5 of them are made by Nokia, with the 5130 being the most popular device in the country, followed by the 2700 Classic and the 2330 Classic. There are 3 Samsung units in there, along with an LG and a Sony Ericsson.
I can’t help but feel that Opera Mini usage will peak this year. Making a 3G smartphone is getting cheaper and cheaper with time, and so is 3G infrastructure equipment, and then the last bottle neck in terms of web browsing on your mobile phone, your processor speed, is also growing at an amazing rate. Like I said in my review of Opera Mini 5.1 for Android, I still keep it installed for those rare times when I’m in an area of Finland with only EDGE access, but most of my browsing is mainly down in the default Android 2.2 browser.