Opera, the Oslo-based browser company, has released its latest monthly State of the Mobile Web Report. The company is calling this month’s report the “World Cup Edition,” as it takes a closer look at the continued explosion of the mobile Web in Africa and declares Chile as the winner of its own “Mobile Web World Cup.”
According to the report, the mobile Web in Africa continued to see triple digit growth, with page views increasing by 182% over last year, unique users by 124% and data transferred by 160%.
The report looks specifically at the top 12 countries in Africa using Opera Mini, one of Opera’s mobile browsers. Of the top 12 countries, Sudan and Ghana lead with explosive page-view growth rates of 4,645% and 916%, respectively. In Kenya, however, the mobile Web seems to have the most cohesion with users, as it leads with each user browsing an average of 639 pages per month.
“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,” says Opera co-founder Jon von Tetzchner in the report.
Opera has a stake in the mobile Web with its mobile browsers, Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, which can speed up Web browsing through data compression and server-side caching, especially on feature phones and less CPU-intensive smartphones. Opera Mini had more than 59 million users in June, an increase of nearly 125% from over a year ago.
While we didn’t see Opera on the iPhone as a home run, the browser has been a much bigger success on feature phones. In Africa, Opera saw wide usage on Nokia, and the brand remains the most popular, followed by Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG.
