State of the Mobile Web, May 2009
Summer is upon us and I am looking forward to a few, well-earned weeks of vacation. I will certainly be able to relax after seeing Opera Mini resume its usual impessive month-over-month growth.
Looking back on May, we added 8% more users since April and more than 136% from the year before. That is solid growth in my book, but I always believe we can do more.
The mobile Web is growing at a rapid pace. For every smartphone, where you expect a fully-functioning Web browser, approximately eight feature phones are sold. That is why Opera Mini is performing a vital service to consumers everywhere, and we take that responsibility seriously.
As the mobile Web matures, search will be a very interesting industry to watch. That is why we decided to examine it this month. We want to watch it evolve as new technologies and new players expand what is currently possible on a mobile device.
Perhaps the report in 2010 will look different, but you will not be surprised to know that Google and Yahoo! are quite prevalent in our search engine analysis. Baidu and Yandex also perform strongly in their strongholds of China, and Russia/Ukraine, respectively. I hope that as search evolves, we can see the trends in our numbers and perhaps be able to document how different regions respond to different technical innovations.
We also return to Southeast Asia this month to see how things have changed since our previous report on the region. Indonesia is no surprise as the leader, but Vietnam's growth has been nothing short of startling, up approximately 418%. I would love to chance to visit thecountry and see firsthand how they use the mobile Web.
Those numbers certainly justify a visit, as would any country with such explosive growth in mobile Web usage. Unfortunately, my trip takes me elsewhere. Have a wonderful summer. We will be back next month with another report--and we might just have a few summer surprises in store for you in the meantime.
Kind Regards,
Jon S. von Tetzchner
CEO, Opera Software
Highlights
- This month saw significant gains in all three categories of growth (users, pages viewed and data consumed)
- In the top 10 list of countries, India moved up, switching spots with Ukraine. Poland also went up, pushing Nigeria down to the tenth spot.
- The top 9 countries using Opera Mini in Southeast Asia are Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos.
- Some numbers regarding Southeast Asia: From May 2008 to May 2009, overall page views in the top 9 countries listed increased 459%. From May 2008 to May 2009, overall unique users in the top 9 countries listed increased 119%. From May 2008 to May 2009, overall data transferred in the top 9 countries listed increased 271%.
- Since our last spotlight on Southeast Asia, Vietnam jumped from #5 to #2 and Philippines jumped from #6 to #3.
- Growth rates in Southeast Asia remain high: Vietnam leads the top 9 countries with 412.9% growth in users this year, followed by the Philippines (353.6% growth) and Malaysia (249.6% growth).
- In our previous Southeast Asia spotlight (October 2008), Indonesia led the way with each user viewing 358 pages on average. In May 2009, that figure was surpassed in 3 countries--Indonesia (420 page views per user), Philippines (705 page views per user) and Brunei (461 page views per user).
- In Southeast Asia, among mobile Web users, Google is the dominant player in the search engine space, with Yahoo in second place.
- Friendster continues to be popular in Southeast Asia, but Facebook has made significant strides, especially in Indonesia--where it finally broke through Friendster's previous dominance of the number 1 spot.
- Nokia handsets continue to be dominant in Southeast Asia, followed by Sony Ericsson.
- Google continues to assert itself as a global leader in search, but Yandex and Baidu continue to be the top players in Russia and China, respectively, and Yahoo is particularly strong in Indonesia and Nigeria.
- Opera Mini users in India and Nigeria do the most searching. In India, 16.3% of page views are search related, and users view an average of 63.7 search-related pages per month. In Nigeria, 26.6% of page views are search related, and users view an average of 49.6 search-related pages per month.
- Opera Mini users in Ukraine do the least searching: 0.7% of page views are search related, and users view an average of 4.3 search-related pages per month.
Part 1: Growth
Number of users
In May 2009, Opera Mini had nearly 25.4 million users, an 8.4% increase from April 2009 and more than 136% compared to May 2008.
Pages transcoded
Opera Mini users viewed over 9.6 billion pages in May 2009. Since April, page views have gone up 11.0%. Since May 2008, page views have increased 227%.
| Month | Page views |
|---|---|
| June 2007 | 788,283,659 |
| July 2007 | 867,208,160 |
| August 2007 | 907,690,600 |
| September 2007 | 872,028,768 |
| October 2007 | 1,192,916,658 |
| November 2007 | 1,414,205,703 |
| December 2007 | 1,558,566,188 |
| January 2008 | 1,787,235,674 |
| February 2008 | 1,883,751,325 |
| March 2008 | 2,429,200,080 |
| April 2008 | 2,491,451,387 |
| May 2008 | 2,947,979,866 |
| June 2008 | 3,224,286,622 |
| July 2008 | 3,736,244,111 |
| August 2008 | 4,172,941,429 |
| September 2008 | 4,533,894,901 |
| October 2008 | 5,088,923,679 |
| November 2008 | 5,703,580,103 |
| December 2008 | 6,418,665,392 |
| January 2009 | 7,592,623,125 |
| February 2009 | 7,347,728,912 |
| March 2009 | 8,627,181,759 |
| April 2009 | 8,687,835,336 |
| May 2009 | 9,641,002,614 |
Data consumed
In May 2009, Opera Mini users generated nearly 160 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since April, the data consumed went up by 5.6%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed up to 1.5 PB of data in May. Since May 2008, data traffic is up 245%.
| Month | Data transfer (MB) |
|---|---|
| June 2007 | 8,573,444 |
| July 2007 | 10,447,285 |
| August 2007 | 11,145,396 |
| September 2007 | 10,654,061 |
| October 2007 | 13,412,789 |
| November 2007 | 15,818,999 |
| December 2007 | 21,613,966 |
| January 2008 | 25,437,344 |
| February 2008 | 28,477,270 |
| March 2008 | 35,536,969 |
| April 2008 | 38,264,066 |
| May 2008 | 46,273,165 |
| June 2008 | 50,181,823 |
| July 2008 | 57,824,328 |
| August 2008 | 64,853,884 |
| September 2008 | 70,095,676 |
| October 2008 | 79,167,872 |
| November 2008 | 91,084,753 |
| December 2008 | 103,144,185 |
| January 2009 | 122,005,065 |
| February 2009 | 124,835,298 |
| March 2009 | 148,884,676 |
| April 2009 | 151,023,302 |
| May 2009 | 159,545,769 |
Part 2: Country snapshots for May 2009
Part 3: Spotlight on Southeast Asia
Highlights
- The top 9 countries using Opera Mini in Southeast Asia are Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos.
- Some numbers regarding Southeast Asia: From May 2008 to May 2009, overall page views in the top 9 countries listed increased 459%. From May 2008 to May 2009, overall unique users in the top 9 countries listed increased 119%. From May 2008 to May 2009, overall data transferred in the top 9 countries listed increased 271%.
- Since our last spotlight on Southeast Asia, Vietnam jumped from #5 to #2 and Philippines jumped from #6 to #3.
- Growth rates in Southeast Asia remain high: Vietnam leads the top 9 countries with 412.9% growth in users this year, followed by the Philippines (353.6% growth) and Malaysia (249.6% growth).
- In our previous Southeast Asia spotlight (October 2008), Indonesia led the way with each user viewing 358 pages on average. In May 2009, that figure was surpassed in 3 countries--Indonesia (420 page views per user), Philippines (705 page views per user) and Brunei (461 page views per user).
- In Southeast Asia, among mobile Web users, Google is the dominant player in the search engine space, with Yahoo in second place.
- Friendster continues to be popular in Southeast Asia, but Facebook has made significant strides, especially in Indonesia--where it finally broke through Friendster's previous dominance of the number 1 spot.
- Nokia handsets continue to be dominant in Southeast Asia, followed by Sony Ericsson.
Top 9 countries snapshot
Part 4: Country-by-country search data
This month, we take a closer look at traffic to the search portals in the top 10 countries.
Highlights
- Google continues to assert itself as a global leader in search, but Yandex and Baidu continue to be the top players in Russia and China, respectively, and Yahoo is particularly strong in Indonesia and Nigeria.
- Opera Mini users in India and Nigeria are the biggest users of search portals. In India, 16.3% of page views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 63.7 search portal pages per month. In Nigeria, 26.6% of page views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 49.6 search portal pages per month.
- Opera Mini users in Ukraine use search portals the least: 0.7% of page views are from search portals, and users only view an average of 4.3 search portal pages per month.
Methodology
As far as possible, we have tried to isolate search as an activity from other activities such as mail, messenger and similar activities which search portals such as Google, Yandex, Yahoo! and Baidu offer. However, due to the fact that we presently only aggregate subdomains our users visit, this means that we can only weed out subdomains such as mail.google.com, finance.yahoo.com and so on. The usage of subdomains vary among search portals; Google and Yandex generally redirect most activities apart from search to separate subdomains (like mail.google.com), while Yahoo! and Baidu generally do not. This means that large parts of the traffic to Yahoo! in some places (like Nigeria and Indonesia) probably consist of messaging and/or mail.
We presently only aggregate data for the top 500 subdomains, so percentages of total page views are based on page views of search portal pages in the top 500 subdomains as a percentage of total page views for these top 500 subdomains. This percentage is again multiplied by total page views to calculate the average number of search portal page views per unique user.
We plan to improve our routines for tracking search precisely in different countries and hope to be able to present more precise numbers in the coming months, so stay tuned.
Other formats
- Printable version (PDF, 301kb)
- Opera Mini data sheet (Excel, 18kb)
Related resources
- About the report & methodology
- Download Opera Mini
- Opera Mini features
- Designing Web sites for the mobile world
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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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