State of the Mobile Web, April 2009

In May of 2008 we issued our first State of the Mobile Web. That first report looked at the previous first quarter of 2008. We had two highlights: one highlighting social networks on the mobile Web and one bullet chronicling the decline and fall of WAP. We also introduced the top 10 sites snapshot.

Today we are pleased to say that our State of the Mobile Web is, by almost any measure, the definitive guide to the preferences of more than 20 million mobile Web consumers. If you want to know which handsets are the most popular in the U.S., we can tell you. What social networking site is number one for mobile Web users in Nigeria? Well, that's in here too. Our report aspires to provide more data every month and this month is no exception.

We're pleased this month to give our first highlight on mobile operators' data usage. Our figures are aggregated by country, but they paint a picture of how Opera Mini drives data usage for operators in our top 10 countries.

We found some interesting facts. Opera Mini users in Ukraine consume the most mobile data in part because they view the most pages. Because we compress that data to just a fraction of its true size, we can keep the mobile Web experience fast and responsive for consumers, while reducing strain on operator networks.

Also interesting to note is that U.S. users of Opera Mini view the most data-intensive pages. This is another sure sign that consumers expect One Web. They want to view the same sites and use the same data-intensive services on the mobile Web as when they sit at their computer.

This month we also looked at the mobile Web trends in Africa, which we last profiled in our September report. Libya saw usage rise 4,155% since April 2008. Nigeria, which joined the worldwide top 10 countries this month, saw usage grow 2,353% over the past year.

Enjoy this month's report and our ever-expanding coverage of the mobile Web.

Kind Regards,
Jon S. von Tetzchner
CEO, Opera Software

Part 1: Growth

Number of users

In April 2009, Opera Mini had over 23.4 million users, a 1.5% increase from March 2009 and more than 140% compared to April 2008.

Pages transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed nearly 8.7 billion pages in April 2009. Since March, page views have gone up 0.7%. Since April 2008, page views have increased 249%.

Month	Page views
May 2007	767,107,863
June 2007	788,283,659
July 2007	867,208,160
August 2007	907,690,600
September 2007	872,028,768
October 2007	1,192,916,658
November 2007	1,414,205,703
December 2007	1,558,566,188
January 2008	1,787,235,674
February 2008	1,883,751,325
March 2008	2,429,200,080
April 2008	2,491,451,387
May 2008	2,947,979,866
June 2008	3,224,286,622
July 2008	3,736,244,111
August 2008	4,172,941,429
September 2008	4,533,894,901
October 2008	5,088,923,679
November 2008	5,703,580,103
December 2008	6,418,665,392
January 2009	7,592,623,125
February 2009	7,347,728,912
March 2009	8,627,181,759
April 2009	8,687,835,336

Data consumed

In April 2009, Opera Mini users generated more than 151 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since March, the data consumed went up by 1.4%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed up to 1.4 PB of data in April. Since April 2008, data traffic is up 295%.

Month	Data transfer (MB)
May 2007	8,690,087
June 2007	8,573,444
July 2007	10,447,285
August 2007	11,145,396
September 2007	10,654,061
October 2007	13,412,789
November 2007	15,818,999
December 2007	21,613,966
January 2008	25,437,344
February 2008	28,477,270
March 2008	35,536,969
April 2008	38,264,066
May 2008	46,273,165
June 2008	50,181,823
July 2008	57,824,328
August 2008	64,853,884
September 2008	70,095,676
October 2008	79,167,872
November 2008	91,084,753
December 2008	103,144,185
January 2009	122,005,065
February 2009	124,835,298
March 2009	148,884,676
April 2009	151,023,302

Part 2: Country snapshots for April 2009

Part 3: Spotlight on Africa

Top 12 countries snapshot

Part 4: Data usage by country

This data is an aggregate of the combined operator statistics for each country. Page Views/User, Data/User and Data/Page will vary for each individual operator.

• Customers of U.S. operators view more data-intensive pages than subscribers in any other country. The average page viewed over U.S. operator networks is approximately 32 KB compressed or almost 320 KB uncompressed.
• Operators in Ukraine were the big winners. Their customers each view on average 582 pages per month. Ukraine operators also sport the highest data transfer per user at more than 10 MB per month compressed. This is as much as 100 MB of mobile data per user uncompressed.

Country	Page Views/User	Data (MB)/User	Data (kB)/Page
Russia	416	7.47	18.39
Indonesia	366	4.17	11.66
China	277	2.71	9.99
Ukraine	582	10.18	17.91
India	384	7.70	20.55
South Africa	237	4.79	20.73
United States	198	6.20	32.07
United Kingdom	217	4.83	22.77
Nigeria	313	3.98	13.00
Poland	172	5.29	31.57