State of the Mobile Web, September 2012

India’s favorite shopping mall: the mobile phone

India holds the number one spot for the highest number of monthly Opera Mini users worldwide, so, in this month’s State of the Mobile Web report we take a closer look at mobile web trends in that country.

By using anonymous and aggregated data from the Opera Mini servers, we have mapped out surfing habits in different regions and cities of India to see where the differences lie. The Opera Mini browser is a mobile phone web browser designed to deliver the very best web experience on basic mobile phones to the latest iPad. Our compression technology, aided by our globally distributed data centers — make the full web accessible for all kinds of mobile phones. This, in turn, makes it possible to tabulate very accurate statistics based on the content of websites visited.

The latest data show that the list of international webpages, such as Google, Facebook and YouTube, have remained largely the same across all of India. But for India-specific websites, there were larger differences. Having a large user base for international websites such as Google and Facebook in India, signifies the importance of search and social media in the Indian market.

After examining other regions, such as Africa, South East Asia and Latin America, there are subtle differences in India that are not observed inside other countries. Since India is such a large country and market, with a very diverse population, the differences in the selected regions are quite interesting. For example, we see that some types of websites are popular in all of India, such as the Indian railway system’s website. In other categories, such as news websites, there are more remarkable differences. In addition to one or two national news websites, there is a strong presence of local news media.

In the regional data, we see that interest in education is a strong motivator to go online. Among the most visited domains in several regions are universities and schools, whose websites are often used to check the grades of students. Until recently, such data was published in newspapers, but easily accessible internet eliminates the need to wait for tomorrow’s newspaper. In the Indian domain list, the high season for the educational websites are March/April and September/October, when students are checking their grades.

Also very strong in the Indian market are content download sites for mobile phones. Websites such as Mobile9 and Zedge offer mobile users a way of customizing their mobile devices with wallpapers, ringtones and much more.

Toggle data visibility

Category breakdown

In a breakdown of the top Indian domains, one category sticks out from the crowd. News portals, both Indian and international, have traditionally been very popular among the mobile surfers of India, and remain on top. However, there is a challenger on the top lists of popular website categories. E-commerce has grown to become the second largest website category in the list of top Indian domains.

The e-commerce category now has more different domains in the list than the social-networking category. Domains categorized under e-commerce are both portals where people actually stop and do financial transactions and portals that offer price-comparison of products across shopping portals. The travel category has increased in numbers and become more even more diverse than before. As shown in the regional websites’ top-five lists, Indian Railways is still hugely popular, but it now has the company of other travel-booking sites in the domain list, compared to what was seen in summer 2010, including MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip.

Growth

Since the April 2012 State of the Mobile Web report, Opera Software has reported the unique-user numbers for both the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. Read more about this change.

Since September 2011, the consumer base of the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers grew in unique users by more than 35%. Compared to August 2012, there was a slight decrease in unique users due to seasonal variations and temporary blocking issues. In all, more than 207.2 million people used Opera Mini or Opera Mobile in September. The Opera Mini servers (which do not process pages from Opera Mobile browsers) served 116 billion pages and compressed over 8.3 petabytes of data for Opera Mini users.

Number of mobile product users

In September 2012, there were over 207.2 million Opera Mini and Opera Mobile users. Out of this number, more than 19.6 million were Opera Mobile users, and the rest were Opera Mini users. Compared to September 2011, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile combined grew more than 35% year over year.

Month	Opera Mini	Total users
September 2012	187,528,635	207,194,837
August 2012	190,999,377	209,908,472
July 2012	187,147,324	205,770,416
June 2012	182,464,716	200,350,248
May 2012	178,525,801	196,186,735
April 2012	165,516,827	189,631,504
March 2012	168,844,460	193,009,533
February 2012	160,016,472	183,714,665
January 2012	159,033,038	182,787,117
December 2011	152,651,224	175,940,168
November 2011	144,601,830	166,574,676
October 2011	140,001,098	161,863,689
September 2011	131,319,238	153,031,280
August 2011	128,004,536	149,726,810
July 2011	121,789,463	143,247,132
June 2011	115,058,129	136,220,211
May 2011	113,511,756	134,760,861
April 2011	107,159,911	128,275,809
March 2011	102,488,824	123,389,860
February 2011	89,813,250	110,370,647
January 2011	90,368,678	111,009,722
December 2010	85,540,776	105,882,284
November 2010	80,059,737	98,259,922
October 2010	76,326,877	92,176,914

Opera Mini pages transcoded

Opera Mini users viewed over 116 billion pages in September 2012. Since September 2011, page views have increased by more than 46%.

Month	Page views
September 2012	116,255,078,302
August 2012	122,366,916,411
July 2012	116,520,625,707
June 2012	115,070,847,433
May 2012	113,788,248,994
April 2012	109,172,778,122
March 2012	117,133,940,573
February 2012	108,322,127,981
January 2012	108,711,984,250
December 2011	103,156,318,112
November 2011	88,516,536,629
October 2011	86,241,891,002
September 2011	79,164,254,190
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

Opera Mini data consumed

In September 2012, Opera Mini users generated over 2.21 billion MB of data for operators worldwide. Data in the Opera Mini browser is compressed by up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed nearly 8.3 petabytes of data in September. Since September 2011, data traffic has risen by more than 77%.

Month	Data transfer (MB)
September 2012	2,216,054,026
August 2012	2,215,469,446
July 2012	2,109,653,045
June 2012	2,015,528,597
May 2012	1,983,411,220
April 2012	1,906,598,921
March 2012	1,918,118,366
February 2012	1,916,961,696
January 2012	1,831,047,506
December 2011	1,663,600,099
November 2011	1,421,897,839
October 2011	1,360,336,480
September 2011	1,251,149,418
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