As we all know, the mobile web is expanding at alarming rate. Opera Mini, Opera’s mobile browser, grew its monthly user base to nearly 40 million in October from 32 million in August. The number of page views, Opera Mini viewed 17.2 billion last month, a 238 percent annual increase, a strong indicator that mobile web usage is growing extremely quick. 11 percent in a 2 month period. Staggering.
Opera also showed increased data throughput to the mobile browsers, with a 16 percent increase in data consumption since September 2009. Since October 2008, all data traffic is up 233 percent. These stats are quite impressive and it’s important to acknowledge the popularity of Webkit and Apple’s own Safari Browser.
But Opera Mini does have a stronghold in Russia, Asia and Europe. The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam.
Google and Facebook are growing well in Latin America, while Orkut remains strong within Brazil and Paraguay, however Facebook is slowly gaining ground on their stronghold. Hotmail has become the most popular e-mail site for Latin American users.
Nokia and Sony Ericsson are the most popular handset brands chosen by Opera Mini users.
Opera has some interesting claims that by using the Opera Mini it saves people “billions of dollars every year off their mobile phone bills” this comes from the fact that the browser compresses the data by up to 90%, which could reduce the amount users pay each month for mobile data.
What’s more impressive is the amount of transfer times that compression saves in the delivery of content.
Opera mini users have been sold on the statement that Opera made “That our browser could save the industry 9.4 billion dollars per year” although their logic was skewed due to the metered plan consumptions instead of the more traditional unlimited plans.