State of the Mobile Web, June 2010

From June to July, most of the television-viewing world tuned in to the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Most commentators praised host South Africa’s handling of the most famous and logistically-demanding sporting event this year. To celebrate this occasion, we welcome you to the State of the Mobile Web Report, World Cup edition.

To commemorate this quadrennial milestone, we held the first-ever Opera Mini Mobile Web World Cup. Beginning with the same initial knock-out bracket as in this year’s 2010 FIFA World Cup, we used per capita mobile browsing figures to determine the match winners. Our results were quite different from the real games, with Chile and Argentina advancing to the final match. Chile squeezed by Argentina by just 4.1 pages-per-user on that day to win. Congratulations to one of South America’s most connected countries.

In keeping with our theme, Part 4 explores the top sport sites for our top countries. As you might expect, there is a healthy mix of local sites along with global sites like FIFA.com.

This report also shines a light, naturally, on Africa, where South Africa stands as the continent’s number one country for mobile web usage. Across Africa, the mobile web boom is well-documented. Our numbers provide support to that message: page views in the top 12 countries in Africa increased by 182%, unique users increased by 124%, and the amount of data transferred increased by 160% in the past year.

Beyond the numbers, we see that access to the Web is reshaping the economic, political and social development of the continent. That many millions do this through a mobile phone is gratifying, and I am both honored and humbled that our browser has a part to play in this revolution.

Happy browsing,

Jon von Tetzchner,
Co-founder, Opera Software

Part 1: Growth

Number of users

In June 2010, Opera Mini had over 59.4 million users, a 3.2% decrease from May 2010 but an increase of 124.7% since June 2009. The slight decrease in key metrics can be traced to certain countries where we have experienced some technical and political challenges that now are about to be solved.

Pages transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed over 27.3 billion pages in June 2010. Since May, page views have gone down 3.4%. Since June 2009, page views have increased 161.8%.

Month	Page views
June 2010	27,350,331,025
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

Data consumed

In June 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 416 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since May, the data consumed went down by 4.0%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 3.8 PB of data in June. Since June 2009, data traffic is up 147.1%.

Month	Data transfer (MB)
June 2010	416,406,077
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

Part 2: Country snapshots for June 2010

Part 3: Spotlight on Africa

Top 12 countries snapshot

Part 4: The top sports sites visited by Opera Mini users in June 2010

Section 5: The Mobile Web World Cup

We know which country won the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but which country would win the Opera Mini Mobile Web World Cup? To find out, we started with the 16 teams in the same knock-out bracket as the 2010 FIFA World Cup. On each day the actual games were played, we compared the page views/user of each country. This would tell us which country browsed the most per person.

It was a heated competition, with the country of Chile winning bragging rights for the top mobile browsing country. Chile also posted the highest number, with users browsing on average 91 pages per day on June 27th. Congratulations to Chile!