State of the Mobile Web, May 2010

May was a milestone month for the mobile web. After more than two years of reports, we finally have a new number-one country for mobile web usage. Indonesia, which had been Russia’s closest rival for the greatest number of Opera Mini users, finally displaced the incumbent to top our rankings this month.

But that was not the only change in the top 10. Nigeria continued its dramatic ascent, surpassing Ukraine. The United States also found itself bypassed by South Africa, home of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

Data usage passed a milestone of its own. Opera Mini servers crunched and compressed more than 4 petabytes of data last month, serving up 28.3 billion pages worldwide.

These numbers are an initial description of how much people browse. In these reports, we also describe what people do on the mobile Web. In this report, we wanted to look at when they use the mobile Web. We examined a weekend day to see at what times of day people are most active on Opera Mini.

It turns out that the prime time for mobile browsing in every country was at night, from 8 p.m. to midnight. This holds true for all the countries in the top 10, with the real variation coming at other times of the day.

As companies look to make money from mobile data and mobile web services, understanding the nocturnal habits of mobile web users might help better provision bandwidth and provide additional rationale to ensure uptime during what are typically minimally-staffed hours.

Happy browsing,

Jon von Tetzchner,
Co-founder, Opera Software

Part 1: Growth

Number of users

In May 2010, Opera Mini had over 61.4 million users, a 4.2% increase from April 2010. Since May 2009, the number of unique users has increased 142.0%.

Pages transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed over 28.3 billion pages in May 2010. Since April, page views have gone up 7.7%. Since May 2009, page views have increased 193.8%.

Month	Page views
May 2010	28,325,159,098
April 2010	26,311,685,380
March 2010	25,898,747,364
February 2010	22,055,615,946
January 2010	23,356,863,511
December 2009	20,719,112,062
November 2009	18,814,158,683
October 2009	17,179,459,019
September 2009	14,958,270,625
August 2009	13,949,154,395
July 2009	12,051,716,351
June 2009	10,447,031,428
May 2009	9,641,002,614
April 2009	8,687,835,336
March 2009	8,627,181,759
February 2009	7,347,728,912
January 2009	7,592,623,125
December 2008	6,418,665,392
November 2008	5,703,580,103
October 2008	5,088,923,679
September 2008	4,533,894,901
August 2008	4,172,941,429
July 2008	3,736,244,111
June 2008	3,224,286,622

Data consumed

In May 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 433 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since April, the data consumed went up by 8.8%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 4.0 petabytes of data in May. Since May 2009, data traffic is up 171.8%.

Month	Data transfer (MB)
May 2010	433,688,140
April 2010	398,617,291
March 2010	396,171,723
February 2010	330,601,107
January 2010	337,088,690
December 2009	315,150,762
November 2009	285,126,819
October 2009	263,245,795
September 2009	226,990,071
August 2009	208,786,577
July 2009	186,996,258
June 2009	168,483,963
May 2009	159,545,769
April 2009	151,023,302
March 2009	148,884,676
February 2009	124,835,298
January 2009	122,005,065
December 2008	103,144,185
November 2008	91,084,753
October 2008	79,167,872
September 2008	70,095,676
August 2008	64,853,884
July 2008	57,824,328
June 2008	50,181,823

Part 2: Country snapshots for May 2010

Part 3: Spotlight on Latin America

Top 10 countries snapshot

Part 4: Opera Mini use over the course of a day

We looked at one 24-hour period (Saturday, May 22nd) to see how Opera Mini is used throughout the day in the top 10 countries. In this case, we measured usage according to the amount of data transferred.

For analysis, the 24-hour day was split into six 4-hour slices (using the local time in each country).

Here is what we observed: