Opera Releases Mobile Browsing Stats

Web browser company Opera has released its first State of the Mobile Web report. To produce the report, Opera looked at the aggregate, anonymous traffic of more than 44 million cumulative Opera Mini users worldwide to see where they chose to spend their time when using the web on their mobile devices.
Countries included in the report are the top 10 Opera Mini countries by usage. All content analysis is based on a review of the Top 100 sites, ranked according to page views in each country. The designation of sites to specific categories has been done with local content experts who followed Operas guidelines to characterize each site.
The statistics come from Operas consumer Opera Mini users only and do not include operator deals.
Opera says that two key trends emerge from the report. The first is that social networking stands supreme, with almost 40% of traffic worldwide going to social networks, rising to more than 60% in some countries, including the US, South Africa and Indonesia.
The second, says Opera, is that one web will triumph over WAP content. Full web surfing comprises more than 77% of all traffic. Content on dedicated mobile sites accounts for 23% of mobile web traffic. This share continues to decline, says Opera, as more consumers both use Opera Mini to access rich web content, and become more comfortable browsing the web on their phones.

Opera Mini stats
Opera says that Opera Mini has become the worlds most popular mobile browser. Since its worldwide launch in 2006, more than 44 million people have downloaded and used Opera Mini. More than 11.9 million people used Opera Mini in March 2008. In the last quarter, the number of people who downloaded and used Opera Mini grew 26% over the previous quarter.
Opera Mini users viewed more than 2.4 billion pages in March. In the first three months of 2008, the number of pages viewed through Opera Mini grew almost 57% over the last quarter of 2007. In March, each person using Opera Mini viewed an average of 202 pages.

Data Consumed
As the content available to mobile phones improves, data consumption increases. Last month, those 11.9 million Opera Mini users generated more than 33 million MB of data for operators worldwide. This represents an almost 88% growth over the previous quarter.

Content Preferences
By examining aggregate numbers, Opera has been able to paint a picture of the types of sites and services that win on the mobile web. Tracking the type of content across the top 100 sites visited by all Opera Mini users, the company finds:
Social networking is popular worldwide and is the leading source of web traffic for mobile devices.
Successful sites on the web find users on mobile phones, further underscoring the emergence of One Web.
Consumers desire a rich web experience, regardless of the device they use to access the web. WAP continues to diminish as more-capable web browsers are able to display full web content on mobile phones.
Nearly a quarter of all traffic is headed to content portals or search engines.

Country Stats

Russia
Russian Opera Mini users consume more entertainment content than users in all countries except for Ukraine. Traffic to entertainment, leisure and sports sites comprise almost 40% of web traffic to mobile phones.
Top 10 sites in Russia:
1. www.vkontakte.ru
2. win.mail.ru
3. www.google.com
4. www.rambler.ru
5.  www.yandex.ru
6. www.dreamwar.ru
7. www.mamba.ru
8. www.marathonbet.com
9. www.dimonvideo.ru
10. www.wmod.ru

Indonesia
With 63% of traffic going to social networks, Indonesia is tied with the United States as the number one country for social networking on the mobile web.
Top 10 sites in Indonesia:
1.  www.friendster.com
2. id.yahoo.com
3. www.google.com
4. www.peperonity.com
5. wireless.getjar.com
6. www.mig33.com
7. www.mocospace.com
8. www.itsmy.com
9. gallery.mobile9.com
10. www.kaskus.us

China
Web portal content and search engine access is extremely popular in China, accounting for nearly 55% of the traffic. E-commerce and e-mail are not yet as popular in China as in other parts of the world. Together, these two categories combine to create less than 2% of overall Opera Mini traffic in China.
Top 10 sites in China:
1. www.sina.com.cn
2. www.baidu.com
3. www.google.cn
4. www.ko.cn
5. news.sohu.com
6. www.xiaonei.com
7. www.3g.cn
8. www.paojiao.com
9. www.188bet.com
10. www.feiku.com

United States
More than 63% of US web traffic on mobile phones is to social networks, tying it with Indonesia for the number one spot.
Top 10 sites in the US:
1. www.myspace.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.mocospace.com
4. www.yahoo.com
5. www.facebook.com
6. www.live.com
7. www.hi5.com
8. www.wikipedia.org
9. www.itsmy.com
10. www.ebay.com

India

India favours social networking, with nearly half (48.9%) of all traffic going to social networks.
Top 10 sites in India:
1. www.orkut.com
2. www.google.com
3. in.m.yahoo.com
4. www.peperonity.com
5. gallery.mobile9.com
6. www.mocospace.com
7. www.160by2.com
8. www.mobango.com
9. www.itsmy.com
10. www.indianrail.gov.in

South Africa
A very high 61% of traffic in South Africa is to social networks. South Africa has the second-highest penetration of e-mail access on mobile devices (more than 4% of the traffic).
Top 10 sites in South Africa:
1. www.facebook.com
2. www.google.com
3. intl.yahoo.com
4. www.peperonity.com
5. www.mocospace.com
6. www.gumtree.co.za
7. en.wikipedia.org
8. www.itsmy.com
9. news.bbc.co.uk
10. www.webmail.co.za

Ukraine
Opera Mini users in the Ukraine enjoy their entertainment and sports. More than 61% of traffic is in this category. Mobile-optimized content remains popular in the Ukraine – more than 43% of Opera Mini traffic in the Ukraine is directed towards WAP sites.
Top 10 sites in Ukraine:
1. www.vkontakte.ru
2. www.google.com
3. www.darkworlds.ru
4. www.mail.ru
5. www.dreamwar.ru
6. www.wmod.ru
7. www.rambler.ru
8. www.dimonvideo.ru
9. www.mamba.ru
10. www.marathonbet.com

United Kingdom
The United Kingdom is the world leader in mobile e-mail, although that number remains small. More than 11% of traffic in Q1 was to web-based e-mail services.
Top 10 sites in the UK:
1. www.facebook.com
2. www.google.co.uk
3. www.live.com
4. www.bebo.com
5. www.mocospace.com
6. news.bbc.co.uk
7. uk.yahoo.com
8. www.itsmy.com
9. www.faceparty.com
10. www.ebay.co.uk

Germany
Compared to users in other countries, German users shop the most on Opera Mini. E-commerce accounts for more than 7% of German Opera Mini traffic. German users of Opera Mini enjoy entertainment and sports content on their mobile phones. More than 28% of traffic heads to entertainment and other leisure sites.
Top 10 sites in Germany:
1. www.google.de
2. www.studivz.net
3. www.wer-kennt-wen.de
4. www.jappy.de
5. www.schuelervz.net
6. m.web.de
7. mobil.spiegel.de
8. m.gmx.de
9. www.lokalisten.de
10. wap.sport1.de

Poland
In Poland, people using Opera Mini prefer to access the full web from their mobile phones – only 4% of the traffic is to mobile sites.
Top 10 sites in Poland:
1. www.nasza-klasa.pl
2. lajt.onet.pl
3. www.google.pl
4. www.allegro.pl
5.  www.fotka.pl
6.  www.plemiona.pl
7.  www.bwin.com
8.  www.grono.net
9.  www.livescore.com
10. pl.wikipedia.org