Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela Tops in Latin America for Mobile Web Usage
Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela lead Latin America in adoption of the mobile Web according to the latest "State of the Mobile Web" report issued by Opera Software. Google leads the way in most countries, followed by some of the most popular social-networking sites.
Additionally, statistics from July reveal that the mobile Web continues to expand worldwide. The number of people using Opera Mini, the world's most popular mobile Web browser with 15.8 million unique monthly users, grew 9.4% month over month, while page views grew almost 16% in the same period.
"We're pleased to see such considerable growth and interest in accessing
the Web from mobile phones globally," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera.
"But the pace of adoption in Latin America is increasing rapidly. The
reasons behind this growth are two-fold. First, consumers are willing to
purchase data plans because of the cost savings associated with Opera Mini's
data compression. They are able to surf more. Second, 80% of phones in Latin
America can support a lightweight Web browser. Giving those consumers a better
Web experience helps drive both interest in and
adoption of the mobile Web. Operators in Latin America are now embarking on
ambitious mobile Web strategies as they realize the business benefit and
increased revenue of offering full Web browsing to their customers."
Most popular handsets - Worldwide
Within the top 10 countries using Opera Mini, Nokia phones are used the most to download Opera Mini. Six out of the top 10 phones are from Nokia, two are from Sony Ericsson, one is from BlackBerry, and one is from Samsung.
- Nokia N70
- Nokia N73
- Nokia 6300
- Sony Ericsson K750i
- BlackBerry 8310
- Nokia 6233
- Nokia 6600
- Samsung E250
- Sony Ericsson W810i
- Nokia 5300
Select highlights for Latin America:
- Brazil leads the way in mobile Web usage in Latin America, followed closely by Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina.
- Orkut, metroFLOG and hi5 are the most prevalent social-networking sites in Latin America, although Facebook is the fourth-most-popular site in Venezuela.
- Local domains are few and far between in the top 10. Brazil leads all Latin American countries with two, while most have one or no local domains in the top 10.
Select global highlights from the July report:
- Mobile Web usage continues to grow in significant categories: unique users, pages viewed and data traffic.
- More than 15.8 million people used Opera Mini in July, a 9.4% increase from June.
- Those 15.8 million people viewed 3.7 billion pages in July, averaging 236 pages each. Since June, page views have gone up 15.9%.
-Data traffic grew in line with the page-view increase. Opera Mini users generated 53.8 million MB of data for operators worldwide, a 15.2% increase over last month. Because this data is compressed an average of 90%, Opera Mini users would have viewed more 538 million MB of data in the month of July.
The full report is available on the Opera website.
Posted to the site on 20th August 2008
