Oslo, Norway – May 31, 2012
For a long time, Russia has been the top-ranked country for the highest number of Opera Mini web browser users. However, in the last two months India has soared to the top of the list. After rapid growth in the last two years, India outdid Russia in both March and April, and is still accelerating in growth.
The growth of Opera Mini usage in India is part due to the Mobile Internet Generation (“M-gen” among friends).
M-gen is that young generation who is hooked on to the Internet from a very young age (unlike their parents, who got access to web only when they entered work-life) and chooses to stay online while on the go at the cheapest cost.
Growth
As of this report and onwards, we have changed the State of the Mobile Web report to better reflect the worldwide growth of smartphone users. As such, the number of Opera Mobile users each month is now included in the report, to reflect the total number of people using Opera browsers on their mobiles.
While Opera Mini is by far the most popular product in the Opera browser portfolio, the inclusion of Opera Mobile with the total numbers of Opera mobile browser products seem natural to this report. The new growth numbers presented in this month’s State of the Mobile Web report have been updated to reflect this. Also, from this report on, we will focus on comparing user growth numbers year over year to give a better representation and to better capture seasonal factors such as holiday periods, fewer days in certain months, and more. Also included from this report and onwards are Opera Mini unique user numbers from operator white-label agreements.
In April 2012, there were over 189.6 million Opera Mini and Opera Mobile users. Out of this number, 17 million were Opera Mobile users, and the rest Opera Mini users. Compared to April 2011, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile combined grew 47.8% year over year.
Read the State of the Mobile Web report.