During the FIFA World Cup, football enthusiasts were seen glued to their mobile devices to keep themselves updated about the scoreboard. According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report World Cup Edition, India is seen to have grown in terms of utilizing the mobile web. The report flashes light on some of the most clicked sites and the increasing global trend for the same.
As per the report, page-views and unique-users for Opera Mini software has considerably increased since June 2009 to 374.4% and 346.9% respectively. This growth is known to be the highest since June 2008 where the unique-user was a mere 32.5%. The record also finds that page-views per user were 398, data transferred per user was 8MB and data transferred per page view was 19KB during the World cup.
According to the report, Google, Orkut, Facebook, YouTube, GetJar, Yahoo, Songs.pk, Zedge, Wikipedia and Opera are the top 10 websites regularly viewed by unique users in India. It also shares that the top mobile phones in June 2010 were Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, 3110c, 2690, N70, 2730c, 6300, N73, N72 and 7210c.
Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder, Opera Software, commented, “The mobile web is growing quickly throughout Africa. The mobile web is critical in the region, where mobile phone penetration is substantially higher than PC penetration. The widespread availability of mobile phones means the mobile web can reach tens of millions more than the wired web. I’m honored Opera Mini has a part to play, as the mobile web begins reshaping the economic, political and social development of the continent.”
The research further revealed that Opera Mini had over 59.4 million users; 27.3 billion pages were viewed by them and over 416 million MB of data were generated by users for operators worldwide in June 2010. The survey also claimed that users mainly belonged to Ukraine, South Africa, United States and Vietnam countries which are said to have increased their position in the list of top 10.
As per Africa trends, the top 12 countries using Opera Mini are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius. In these countries page views had increased by 182%, unique users had grown by 124% and the amount of data transferred had extended up to 160%. In Africa, Facebook is the top-ranked website in six of the 12 listed countries and Google is the number one in the latter six.
In terms of growth rates, Sudan and Ghana tops the charts in page-view and unique users for Opera Mini; and Kenya leads in page views per user. The report hints that Nokia is the most popular handset brand in Africa followed by Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG. The survey concluded that in the Mobile Web World Cup bracket Chile leads the team in terms of page views per user by knocking Argentina.