Oslo, Norway – August 8, 2006
Opera Software today announced that Opera Mini users have surfed one billion Web pages since the browser’s official launch seven months ago. The most popular sites are Google search, community and dating sites, e-mail and domains for more grown-up entertainment. The little browser has been embraced by more than five million active users worldwide, and is increasingly pre-installed on mobile phones from leading operators and mobile phone manufacturers across the globe.
The aggregated statistics reveal that Google search is the most popular .com site, followed by Gmail.com, Friendster.com, MySpace.com, Yahoo Messenger and hi5.com. This suggests that finding information and staying connected while on-the-go are the two most popular activities for people when using the Opera Mini mobile browser. Other popular sites include news, maps and entertainment.
“Mobile phone users are short-changed in the range of content offered by most service providers,” says Tony Cripps, senior analyst at Ovum. “Enabling handsets to access the World Wide Web greatly improves this situation, extending both mainstream and niche preferences to the mobile domain and helping to drive data traffic.”
Most Opera Mini usage comes from Russia, closely followed by the United States, India, Scandinavia and the UK. Countries with low PC penetration but high mobile phone penetration, such as South Africa and Bangladesh, also rank high on the list. This may confirm the importance of having a mobile friendly Web that is accessible from mobile devices for the millions of people who do not have access to a PC, but own a mobile phone.
“Today is not just a great day for Opera; it’s a pivotal day for the mobile entertainment industry and operators worldwide,” says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Opera Mini’s success shows that mobile data services have a massive potential as long as the quality of the service matches and exceeds people’s expectations. Reaching one billion page views in just seven months is a true milestone, proving that people are so satisfied with the performance and usability of Opera Mini that they use the browser actively and on a regular basis.”
Many leading operators and handset manufacturers have already realized the great potential of Opera Mini. T-Mobile is pre-installing Opera Mini on selected handsets as part of its Web’n’Walk offering in Europe, and several other leading mobile players are signing up to deliver the Opera Mini Web experience to mobile phone users around the world. A long list of mobile content providers are promoting customized versions of Opera Mini to customers in order to increase usage and customer loyalty. The free browser has become one of the world’s most popular mobile Java applications in just seven months.
About Opera Mini
Opera Mini is a free mobile Web browser designed to bring the real Web to the world’s mobile phones. The free Opera Mini mobile Web browser was launched worldwide in January, and is available both as a free download from http://mini.opera.com as well as through pre-installments on selected handsets from leading operators and handset manufacturers such as T-Mobile, debitel and Motorola. Read more at http://www.opera.com/mini.
- Get yours from http://mini.opera.com!
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