State of the Mobile Web, December 2010
The holiday months are often associated with long lines and short supplies as shoppers descend on stores in search of the latest gifts and best offers. In 2010, consumers turned to the mobile Web to make the process of holiday shopping smarter and easier. In this State of the Mobile Web Report, we examined shopping trends in western countries by measuring mobile Internet usage of Amazon, arguably the largest shopping site on the Web.
Over the course of 2010, we observed a significant increase in the use of Amazon. The percentage of Opera Mini users who accessed Amazon (per month) went from 3.8% in January to 7.4% in December, with relatively steady growth during the year. In terms of daily browsing, two spikes in Amazon.com usage clearly show how the shopping frenzy of Black Friday and Cyber Monday carry over to the mobile Web.
It is not hard to imagine the benefits of the full Web right at your fingertips when shopping in a crowded store. “Is this TV on sale really a good offer, or can I get a better deal online? What are people saying on the Web about the advantages of this computer model compared to the more expensive one?” Full access to the Web via Opera Mini—even under difficult conditions such as crowded cellular networks—puts power back in the hands of the consumers.
In this month's regional focus, we take a closer look at mobile Internet usage in Africa. The mobile Web is growing rapidly in Africa, with countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe experiencing tremendous growth in 2010. Just as we see in the overall global market, the need for information and social interaction drive Google and Facebook right to the top of these emerging African markets.
Have a happy 2011, and happy browsing.
Jon von Tetzchner,
Co-founder, Opera Software
- Part 1: Special feature — Holiday shopping
- Part 2: Growth
- Part 3: Country snapshots for December 2010
- Part 4: Regional spotlight — Africa
Part 1: Special feature — Holiday shopping
For this month’s report, we looked at online shopping trends among Opera Mini users during the holiday season. In particular, we focused on what is arguably the most well-known retail site on the Web — Amazon.com (and its country-specific variants). We were curious to see if more people accessed Amazon on their handsets up to and during the month of December.
Methodology A: Our most reliable assessment of usage in this case was the number of users of Opera Mini who accessed Amazon at least once over the course of a month. For any given month, we divided the number of Opera Mini users who visited Amazon by the total number of unique users of Opera Mini to determine the percentage of users who visited Amazon that month. We calculated this monthly percentage over a 12-month period.
Amazon usage is illustrated in the charts below. In addition to worldwide stats, we looked at the United States and Germany, two countries where Amazon is accessed relatively heavily by Opera Mini users:
Worldwide Amazon usage statistics
2010
US Amazon usage statistics
2010
Germany Amazon usage statistics
2010
Analysis
We hypothesized that Amazon usage would increase in the month of December and the months leading up to it. In 2010, usage of Amazon went up dramatically in March and continued to stay at that level.
We saw that Amazon usage grew coinciding with the launch of Opera Mini for the Android platform and the iPhone shortly after. Another possibility is that Amazon itself may have become more mobile-friendly. Improved mobile platforms and sites that more strongly consider multiple screen sizes have helped users to further embrace mobile shopping.
In 2010 overall, Amazon usage increased almost every month and was highest in the October to December period. Usage in the United States and Germany grew particularly quickly. For Germany, the number of unique users visiting Amazon.com more than doubled from January 2010 to December 2010, from 3 percent to over 8 percent.
Methodology B: We also looked at daily browsing in November and December, focusing on Amazon.com in the United States.
Here is a chart showing (over a two-month period) the daily percentage of users in the United States who visited www.amazon.com.
Amazon.com unique users (percentage of USA total)
November
December
Here is a chart showing (over a two-month period) the daily percentage of www.amazon.com page views in the United States.
Amazon.com page views (percentage of USA total)
November
December
Analysis
In terms of daily page views, a spike was observed on November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States — also known as “Black Friday”. Another peak was observed on November 29th, known as “Cyber Monday”.
In terms of daily users, we saw a similar spike on November 26th (“Black Friday”).
It may be too early to spot long-term trends, but spikes in the data due to holidays and other special events are clearly reflected in our logs of mobile web usage.
Part 2: Growth
Opera Mini saw significant increases in all three categories of growth in December 2010: unique users, pages viewed and data consumed. In all, 85.5 million people used Opera Mini in December, 46.7 billion pages were served, and 6.5 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users.
Number of users
In December 2010, Opera Mini had over 85.5 million users, a 6.8% increase from November 2010. Since December 2009, the number of unique users has increased 84.7%.
Pages transcoded
Opera Mini users viewed over 46.7 billion pages in December 2010. Since November, page views have gone up 4.6%. Since December 2009, page views have increased 125.5%.
| Month | Page views |
|---|---|
| December 2010 | 46,725,301,390 |
| November 2010 | 44,652,355,113 |
| October 2010 | 41,623,101,976 |
| September 2010 | 36,972,736,551 |
| August 2010 | 33,923,604,102 |
| July 2010 | 29,679,113,203 |
| 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 |
Data consumed
In December 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 706 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since November, the data consumed went up by 4.3%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 6.5 petabytes of data in December. Since December 2009, data traffic is up 124.1%.
| Month | Data transfer (MB) |
|---|---|
| December 2010 | 706,327,921 |
| November 2010 | 677,508,852 |
| October 2010 | 616,192,761 |
| September 2010 | 535,337,310 |
| August 2010 | 489,402,631 |
| July 2010 | 445,158,599 |
| 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 |
Part 3: Country snapshots for December 2010
Top 10
Russia regained the top spot (over Indonesia) in terms of total Opera Mini users in the month of December. In addition, Ukraine, Belarus, Egypt and Turkey all went up in the ranking of top 20 countries.
Countries 11-20
Part 4: Regional spotlight — Africa
Highlights
- The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
- Some numbers: From December 2009 to December 2010, page views in the top 10 countries of Africa increased by 365%, unique users increased by 176% and data transferred increased by 331%.
- Growth rates in Africa: Sudan and Zimbabwe lead the top 10 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (4908.2 % and 2321.6 %, respectively). Zimbabwe and Sudan lead the top 10 countries of the region in growth of unique users (1719.3 % and 1219.4 %, respectively). Sudan and Zimbabwe lead the top 10 countries of the region in growth of data transferred (3672.6 % and 1449.5 %, respectively). Zimbabwe leads the top 10 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 830 pages on average each month.
- In the top 10 African countries, Facebook and Google vie for the number one ranking. In 6 out of the top 10 countries, Facebook was number one. In the remaining 4 countries, Google was number one. YouTube, Yahoo, and Wikipedia are also prominent on the top 10 lists of the top 10 African countries.
- We looked at the top 10 handsets used in each of the top 10 African countries. Out of the 100 total handsets listed, 87 of them were Nokia, 8 of them were Samsung, 3 of them were Sony Ericsson and 2 of them were LG. In 6 out of the 10 countries, the top 10 lists were comprised solely of Nokia handsets.
Top 10 Countries Snapshot
Other formats
- Printable version (PDF, 225kB)
- Opera Mini data sheet (Excel, 33kB)
Related resources
Recent reports
- A quick look at early adopters on Android
- Opera Web Pass insight
- Opera on mobile phones experience record growth
- The top local domains of Europe
Contact
For more information about the State of the Mobile Web report, please contact Pål Unanue-Zahl palu[at]opera.com, +47 2369 2400.
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