State of the Mobile Web, August 2011

• Energy efficiency and the mobile Web
• Growth
• Country snapshots for August 2011
• Regional spotlight on the Middle East

Part 1: Energy efficiency and the mobile Web

In today’s rapidly evolving and interconnected world, it is worthwhile to remember that all our activities on the Internet are powered by electricity, and not all sources of electricity are equally modern and environmentally friendly. Over the last several years, the rise of cloud computing has been accompanied by increased concerns about data centers and their energy consumption. Here at Opera, our various data centers process the vast amount of data served to Opera Mini and Opera Turbo users around the world. Making the energy use of those data centers both clean and efficient has required significant work, but we know that conservation is both good business and good for the environment. Indeed, Opera Mini usage has been doubling every 8-10 months, making it even more critical for us to improve the efficiency of our operations so that mobile browsing can be as green as possible.

Below are some estimates of what we have accomplished in the last few years by using more efficient servers and selecting data centers that primarily use renewable energy:

Through our careful selection of data centers, we have been able to maintain a sustained average PUE (power usage effectiveness) of around 1.5, and our goal is to reduce that even further over time. This is down significantly from our previous PUE estimates of 2.2 in 2009 and 1.9 in 2010.

Our data centers use renewable energy sources as much as possible. For example, we have data centers in Iceland where 100% of the energy is considered renewable, and we require our data centers in the United States to be powered by 80% renewable energy (or that they can document that the utility company will increase that percentage to 80% within the next 3-5 years).

Our average usage of renewable energy was 65% in 2011, up from 63% in 2010 and 45% in 2009. In the next two years, we hope to increase that to 80% as we phase out the older and less efficient data centers and move toward greener ones.

By using more efficient servers, we have reduced the energy consumed by each Opera Mini user.

Based on our calculations (total KwH divided by the number of Opera Mini users), we see that the KwH per million Opera Mini users has decreased from 5.7 to 3.7 (between 2008 and August 2011).

We will continue to track and share our energy efficiency and the efforts we are taking to improve it. We can’t do it alone, so we hope other IT companies will join us in this critically important endeavor.

Part 2: Growth

In August 2011, the Opera Mini browser saw increases in unique users, page views and data consumed. In all, 128.0 million people used the Opera Mini browser in August, 79.5 billion pages were served, and 11.4 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users.

Number of users

In August 2011, there were over 128.0 million Opera Mini users, a 5.1% increase from July 2011. Since August 2010, the number of unique users has increased 92.3%.

Pages transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed over 79.5 billion pages in August 2011. Since July, page views have gone up 7.4%. Since August 2010, page views have increased 134.6%.

Month	Page views
August 2011	79,594,255,478
July 2011	74,078,891,600
June 2011	67,303,912,324
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

Data consumed

In August 2011, Opera Mini users generated over 1,232 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since July, the data consumed went up by 5.3%. Data in the Opera Mini browser is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 11.4 petabytes of data in August. Since August 2010, data traffic is up 151.8%.

Month	Data transfer (MB)
August 2011	1,232,303,979
July 2011	1,170,603,288
June 2011	1,068,360,258
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

Part 3: Country snapshots for August 2011

India passed Indonesia, and South Africa passed Mexico in terms of total Opera Mini users in the month of August. Turkey, the United Kingdom, Kenya and Pakistan all went up in the ranking of top 20 countries. Uzbekistan was a new addition in August, as Egypt fell off the list.

Top 10

Countries 11-20

Part 4: Spotlight on the Middle East

Top 10 countries snapshot