State of the Mobile Web, May 2011
When we turn our attention to countries like India, we truly witness what the Internet can do for mankind. In this month’s State of the Mobile Web report, we see how India stands tall as a country in rapid development, with internet-based knowledge at the forefront of that growth. Furthermore, the mobile web in India has evolved as an important place to do business. Compared to other countries, we find that a large proportion of mobile web users in India visit shopping sites and view classified ads. The ease with which mobile web users in India have adopted e-commerce is most likely a reflection of the latest generation who discovered the web via mobile, instead of being tethered to the desktop. This is a shift we consider to be revolutionary, and we are proud to have been a major part of it.
Happy browsing!
Jon von Tetzchner,
Co-founder, Opera Software
Part 1: Special spotlight on India
India has always been one of Opera Mini’s most important markets, but since it falls outside of the geographic regions we typically spotlight, we haven’t taken a very close look at India until now. India has been a permanent fixture on the list of top countries according to Opera Mini usage, so we look at month-to-month changes in India in every State of the Mobile Web report. For this report, we will look at how mobile browsing in India changed from year-to-year (May 2010 to May 2011). Also, we will look at the top cities in India using the Opera Mini browser. This is the first time we are presenting data regarding Opera Mini usage in different cities within a country.
Here are the May 2011 stats for India.
India, May 2011
- Page-view growth since May 2010: 218.2 %
- Unique-user growth since May 2010: 188.5 %
- Data transfer growth since May 2010: 160.1 %
- Page views per user: 430
- Data transferred per user (MB): 7
- Data transferred per page view (KB): 17
Top 10 sites in India (by unique users since May 2010)
- google.com
- facebook.com (3)
- youtube.com (4)
- vuclip.com (new)
- orkut.com (2)
- mobile2day.com (new)
- wikipedia.org (6)
- zedge.net
- getjar.com (10)
- filestube.com (new)
Top handsets for May 2011 (since May 2010)
- Nokia 2690 (10)
- Nokia 5130 XpressMusic (1)
- Nokia 2700c (2)
- Nokia X2 (new)
- Nokia 2730c (6)
- Nokia C1 (new)
- Nokia 3110c (3)
- Nokia 5233 (new)
- Nokia 7210 Supernova (7)
- Nokia 6300 (5)
For comparison, here are India’s stats from May 2010:
India, May 2010
- Page-view growth since May 2009: 322.1%
- Unique-user growth since May 2009: 324.2%
- Page views per user: 390
- Data transferred per user (MB): 8
- Data transferred per page view (KB): 21
Top 10 sites in India (unique users)
- google.com
- orkut.com
- facebook.com
- youtube.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- songs.pk
- zedge.net
- my.opera.com
- getjar.com
Top handsets for May 2011 (since May 2010)
- Nokia 5130 XpressMusic
- Nokia 2700c
- Nokia 3110c
- Nokia N70
- Nokia 6300
- Nokia 2730c
- Nokia 7210 Supernova
- Nokia N73
- Nokia N72
- Nokia 2690
Year-to-year changes
Growth
- Between May 2010 and May 2011, India stayed at the #3 spot in terms of total Opera Mini users.
- Unique user and page-view growth in India slowed somewhat, but remained high overall.
- Over the year, the number of page views per user went up from 390 to 430.
Sites
- Vuclip (mobile-optimized video) and Mobile2Day (a mobile portal) are new to the top 10 compared to the same time last year, indicating that sites intended primarily for mobile access are gaining in importance.
- Facebook and YouTube are up slightly in 2011 compared to 2010, but the significant change is Orkut’s drop from #2 to #5. Orkut, one of the original social-networking sites, has long enjoyed popularity specifically in India and Brazil. That said, Facebook seems to be making a major play against Orkut’s marketshare, much as it has eroded the marketshare of MySpace in countries such as the United States.
Handsets
- Nokia handsets dominate the top 10 list in India, both in May 2010 and May 2011. However, within that time period, one handset (the Nokia 2690) jumped from #10 to #1 in India.
- The following handsets in India were new to the list in May 2011 compared to May 2010: Nokia X2, Nokia C1 and Nokia 5233.
Top cities in India
Unique users
- Mumbai
- New Delhi
- Bengaluru
- Kolkata
- Chennai
- Pune
- Lucknow
- Hyderabad
- Chandigarh
- Ahmadabad
Page views
- New Delhi
- Mumbai
- Bengaluru
- Kolkata
- Chennai
- Pune
- Lucknow
- Chandigarh
- Hyderabad
- Ahmadabad
Data transferred
- Mumbai
- New Delhi
- Bengaluru
- Kolkata
- Chennai
- Pune
- Lucknow
- Hyderabad
- Ahmadabad
- Chandigarh
Different habits
On an additional note: figures obtained from AdMarvel, an Opera Software company offering mobile ad optimization, show that the users of the mobile Web in India differ from most other countries. In most countries, the top two spaces in most popular sites to visit are occupied by social networks and search. However, in India shopping and classifieds take a solid second place for favorite sites to visit after social network sites, well ahead of search, as combined site visit data from AdMarvel shows.
Part 2: Growth
In May 2011, the Opera Mini browser saw increases in unique users, page views and data consumed. In all, 113.5 million people used the Opera Mini browser in May, 63.3 billion pages were served, and 9.6 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users.
Number of users
In May 2011, there were over 113.5 million Opera Mini users, a 5.9% increase from April 2011. Since May 2010, the number of unique users has increased 84.7%.
Pages transcoded
Opera Mini users viewed over 63.3 billion pages in May 2011. Since April, page views have gone up 9.4%. Since May 2010, page views have increased 123.8%.
| Month | Page views |
|---|---|
| May 2011 | 63,386,735,162 |
| April 2011 | 57,935,683,078 |
| March 2011 | 59,768,735,532 |
| February 2011 | 51,531,490,158 |
| January 2011 | 52,377,317,703 |
| 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 |
Data consumed
In May 2011, Opera Mini users generated over 1,031 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since April, the data consumed went up by 8.0%. Data in the Opera Mini browser is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 9.6 petabytes of data in May. Since May 2010, data traffic is up 137.8%.
| Month | Data transfer (MB) |
|---|---|
| May 2011 | 1,031,183,476 |
| April 2011 | 954,840,197 |
| March 2011 | 946,210,968 |
| February 2011 | 790,192,801 |
| January 2011 | 804,000,878 |
| 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 |
Part 3: Country snapshots for May 2011
Vietnam and Mexico jumped ahead of South Africa and China on the top 20 list of countries. Kazakhstan, Bangladesh and Kenya also went up in the rankings.
Top 10
Countries 11-20
Part 4: Spotlight on Latin America
Highlights
- The top 10 countries using the Opera Mini browser in this region are Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador and Dominican Republic.
- Some numbers: From May 2010 to May 2011, page views in the top 10 countries of Latin America increased by 1556%, unique users increased by 535% and data transferred increased by 1041%.
- Growth rates in Latin America: Other than Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica lead the top 10 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (1181.9 % and 718.0 %, respectively). Other than Mexico, Brazil and Costa Rica lead the top 10 countries of the region in growth of unique users (485.1 % and 426.4 %, respectively). Other than Mexico, Brazil and Colombia lead the top 10 countries of the region in growth of data transferred (920.9 % and 486.4 %, respectively). Other than Mexico, Costa Rica leads the top 10 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 662 pages on average each month.
- Among the countries of Latin America, the most popular sites include Google, Facebook, YouTube, Live, and Wikipedia. Orkut is popular in Brazil, specifically.
- We looked at the top 10 handsets used in each of the top 9 countries of Latin America. Out of the 90 total handsets listed, 51 of them were Nokia, 14 of them were Alcatel, 13 of them were Sony Ericsson, 4 of them were Apple, 4 of them were LG, 2 of them were BlackBerry, 1 was Motorola and 1 was Samsung.
Top 10 countries snapshot
Other formats
- Printable version (PDF, 246kB)
- 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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