State of the Mobile Web, May 2008
We were pleased by the response to last month’s State of the Mobile Web report. Due to the strong interest, we have decided to release further iterations of this report on a monthly basis.
During the past four months, we have surveyed the people who use Opera Mini in order to tailor our products better. The results of those surveys paint an interesting demographic picture of who uses the Web on a mobile phone. We hope you also might learn from these numbers to understand how we can work together to shape the future of this industry.
We have also maintained our ranking of the top sites in each of the top countries for Opera Mini usage. We have, however, switched from tracking page views to looking at aggregate numbers of unique users to provide a clearer picture of where traffic is headed.
Lastly, we have decided to include a fun snapshot each month of top sites in a specific category. With the Euro 2008 football tournament in progress and the 2008 Summer Olympics coming up in August, we have decided to examine the top sports sites accessed by Opera Mini users worldwide.
Thanks again and keep the feedback coming. We will continually refine this report to meet the evolving needs of our industry.
Regards/Vennlig hilsen/Kær kvedja...
Jon S. von Tetzchner
CEO, Opera Software
Highlights
- In the ten countries examined, male users of Opera Mini greatly outnumber female users. The biggest difference in usage between males and females is in India, where 97.2% of people using Opera Mini to browse the Web are males. The smallest difference is in South Africa, where 1 out of 4 people using Opera Mini are females.
- Browsing the Web on handsets using Opera Mini is most popular amongst the 18-27 year old demographic, but there is some interesting variation between countries. For example, 3 out of 10 Opera Mini users in the Ukraine are under 18 years old. Globally, 13.4% of Opera Mini users are under 18 years of age, 64.5% are 18-27 years of age, 16.7% are 28-37 years of age, 4.4% are 38-47 years of age, and 1% is more than 48 years of age.
- The top 10 sites in each country ranked according to number of users are somewhat different from the top 10 sites in those same countries ranked according to page views. Sites with fewer users but more page views are less common on this report's top 10 lists (compared to the previous report).
Part 1: Growth
Number of Users
Usage of Opera Mini, the world's most popular mobile browser, continues to grow. Every month since its launch in 2006, Opera Mini has seen an increase in users. More than 13 million people used Opera Mini in the month of April, and more than 14.7 million people used Opera Mini in the month of May, which represents a 24.6% increase since March 2008.
Pages transcoded by Opera Mini per month
Pages Transcoded
Opera Mini users viewed nearly 2.5 billion pages in April and more than 2.9 billion pages in May. In April, each person using Opera Mini viewed 191 pages on average. In May, each person using Opera Mini viewed 200 pages on average. Since March, page views have gone up 21.4%.
Total data consumed per month (in MB)
Data Consumed
In April, 13 million Opera Mini users generated more than 35.7 million MB of data for operators worldwide. In May, 14.7 million Opera Mini users generated more than 43.2 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since March, the data consumed went up by 30.4%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed 85% on average. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed nearly 288 million MB of data in the month of May.
Part 2: Country snapshots for May 2008
Snapshot: Russia
- Mobile browsing is popular among the 18-27 year old demographic, but more than 1 in 5 Opera Mini users in Russia are under 18 years old.
Top 10 sites in Russia (# of unique users)
- vkontakte.ru
- mail.ru
- yandex.ru
- google.com
- odnoklassniki.ru
- tegos.ru
- sasisa.ru
- wapos.ru
- yahoo.com
- rambler.ru
User demographics
| Male | 87.5% |
| Female | 12.5% |
| Less than 18 | 21.9% |
| 18-27 | 61.3% |
| 28-37 | 13.2% |
| 38-47 | 3.1% |
| 48+ | 0.5% |
Snapshot: Indonesia
- In Indonesia, 18-27 year old men are the most likely to browse the Web on their mobile phones.
Top 10 sites in Indonesia (# of unique users)
- friendster.com
- google.com
- yahoo.com
- my.opera.com
- gamejump.com
- youtube.com
- getjar.com
- wikipedia.org
- information.com
- peperonity.com
User demographics
| Male | 82.0% |
| Female | 18.0% |
| Less than 18 | 19.3% |
| 18-27 | 52.9% |
| 28-37 | 20.3% |
| 38-47 | 5.9% |
| 48+ | 1.6% |
Snapshot: India
- As in China, the vast majority of Opera Mini users in India are male (~97%) and between 18 and 27 years old (~76%). India also has the lowest percentage (5.6%) of Opera Mini users who are under 18 years old.
Top 10 sites in India (# of unique users)
- google.com
- orkut.com
- yahoo.com
- gmail.com
- rediff.com
- youtube.com
- gamejump.com
- wikipedia.org
- information.com
- my.opera.com
User demographics
| Male | 97.2% |
| Female | 2.8% |
| Less than 18 | 5.6% |
| 18-27 | 75.7% |
| 28-37 | 13.8% |
| 38-47 | 3.8% |
| 48+ | 1.0% |
Snapshot: China
- As in India, a vast majority of Opera Mini users in China are male (~95%) and between 18 and 27 years old (70%).
Top 10 sites in China (# of unique users)
- kong.net
- baidu.com
- google.cn
- sina.com.cn
- qq.com
- xiaonei.com
- hao123.com
- sohu.com
- 3g.cn
- taobao.com
User demographics
| Male | 94.5% |
| Female | 5.5% |
| Less than 18 | 8.5% |
| 18-27 | 70.0% |
| 28-37 | 16.9% |
| 38-47 | 3.8% |
| 48+ | 0.7% |
Snapshot: United States
- Of the top 10 countries, the United States has the highest number (proportionally) of Opera Mini users who are over 48 years old.
Top 10 sites in the U.S. (# of unique users)
- google.com
- myspace.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- facebook.com
- nytimes.com
- youtube.com
- espn.com
- cnn.com
- accuweather.com
User demographics
| Male | 80.6% |
| Female | 19.4% |
| Less than 18 | 8.3% |
| 18-27 | 43.7% |
| 28-37 | 29.6% |
| 38-47 | 11.4% |
| 48+ | 7.0% |
Snapshot: South Africa
- 1 in 4 Opera Mini users in South Africa is female. Proportionally, more women use Opera Mini in South Africa than in any other country.
Top 10 sites in South Africa (# of unique users)
- facebook.com
- google.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- gamejump.com
- greystripe.com
- youtube.com
- my.opera.com
- live.com
- peperonity.com
User demographics
| Male | 75.3% |
| Female | 24.7% |
| Less than 18 | 12.5% |
| 18-27 | 62.8% |
| 28-37 | 17.3% |
| 38-47 | 6.3% |
| 48+ | 1.1% |
Snapshot: Ukraine
- A higher percentage (~30%) of young people in Ukraine browse the Web on mobile than in any other country listed.
Top 10 sites in Ukraine (# of unique users)
- google.com
- vkontakte.ru
- mail.ru
- sasisa.ru
- yahoo.com
- wapos.ru
- 1124.ru
- seclub.org
- tegos.ru
- yandex.ru
User demographics
| Male | 91.5% |
| Female | 8.5% |
| Less than 18 | 29.8% |
| 18-27 | 49.6% |
| 28-37 | 15.0% |
| 38-47 | 4.8% |
| 48+ | 0.8% |
Snapshot: United Kingdom
- Of the top 10 countries, the United Kingdom has the highest percentage (~34%) of users in the 28-37 age group.
Top 10 sites in the U.K. (# of unique users)
- yahoo.com
- google.com
- news.bbc.co.uk
- facebook.com
- live.com
- youtube.com
- wikipedia.org
- bebo.com
- myspace.com
- ebay.co.uk
User demographics
| Male | 83.4% |
| Female | 16.6% |
| Less than 18 | 10.8% |
| 18-27 | 38.9% |
| 28-37 | 33.7% |
| 38-47 | 13.5% |
| 48+ | 3.1% |
Snapshot: Germany
- Of the top 10 countries, Germany has the highest percentage (24.5%) of users in the 38-47 age group. Over 30% of German Opera Mini users are over 38 years old.
Top 10 sites in Germany (# of unique users)
- google.com
- yahoo.com
- wikipedia.org
- sport1.de
- ebay.de
- studivz.net
- spiegel.de
- my.opera.com
- web.de
- heise.de
User demographics
| Male | 94.3% |
| Female | 5.7% |
| Less than 18 | 8.2% |
| 18-27 | 37.7% |
| 28-37 | 23.9% |
| 38-47 | 24.5% |
| 48+ | 5.7% |
Snapshot: Poland
- Outside of Ukraine, Poland has the highest percentage (~24%) of young people browsing the Web on mobile phones, and the fewest female users (proportionally) outside of India.
Top 10 sites in Poland (# of unique users)
- google.pl
- lajt.onet.pl
- allegro.pl
- nasza-klasa.pl
- wikipedia.org
- wp.pl
- fotka.pl
- onet.pl
- youtube.com
- rozklad-pkp.pl
User demographics
| Male | 95.0% |
| Female | 5.0% |
| Less than 18 | 23.9% |
| 18-27 | 52.2% |
| 28-37 | 19.4% |
| 38-47 | 2.2% |
| 48+ | 2.2% |
Sports sites
Here are the Top 10 sports sites around the world that are accessed on mobile phones using Opera Mini:
- livescore.com
- championat.ru
- sport-express.ru
- iplt20.com
- espn.go.com
- sportbox.ru
- skysports.com
- cricinfo.com
- sports.3g.cn
- wwe.com
About the report & methodology
When Opera Mini users connect to the Web, their page requests are processed through a secured server. These servers are located in several countries across the globe in order to improve throughput and ensure that Web surfers get their pages lightning fast and without forcing the phone to process the page. Information contained in this report is based on aggregated information obtained from Opera Mini servers. The security and privacy of people who use Opera Mini is of paramount importance and we safeguard the trust they give us. Our privacy policy is available here.
Countries selected for this report are the Top 10 Opera Mini countries by usage. Subsequent reports will include updates for these countries as well as different regions around the world.
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 Opera's guidelines to characterize each site.
Demographic data was collected from voluntary user surveys that were made available to a random subset of Opera Mini users, via their handsets, in English, Russian, Chinese, German and Polish. Surveys responses were collected between February 2008 and June 2008.
Opera and the mobile world
Opera first developed a mobile browser in 1998. Since then, we've been at the forefront of enabling a full Web experience on mobile phones. In 2005, we released Opera Mini, the first browser that could work on any phone with Java. Regardless of the hardware on the phone, Opera Mini is able to bring the full Web to many millions of people, some who otherwise would not be able to access it.
