The Indian subcontinent is gigantic and offers a large diversity of population and also habits. In this month’s State of the Mobile Web report, we examine variations in different regions of India to see if there are regional differences in mobile surfing habits. We also take a look at the rapidly emerging e-commerce business in India.
In the examination, we found that for international web sites, such as Google search, Facebook and others, usage remains consistent all over India. There was also strong growth in e-commerce and travel websites in the last year.
The differences in surfing habits are larger when looking at India-specific sites. Education, national railway and local news sites are hot among the different regions, with variations from region to region. When comparing the different regions to the general trend of India, there are a number of differences:
- Some regions exhibit a strong local news affiliation, e.g. Tamilwire.com is on top in the east and south of India but absent from other regional to 5 and national top spots.
- E-commerce is on the rise, with top three e-commerce sites being Quikr, Amazon and Flipkart. To see the top 15 list of e-commerce sites in India, please visit www.opera.com/smw/2012/09.
- Mobile customizing services are hot in India, sites like Zedge and Mobile9 consistently make the top 10 lists of international sites.
- It’s no myth, Indians are passionate about cricket. Sites like Cricbuzz.com and ESPNcricinfo.com often rank in international top 10 lists.
The data is collected in an anonymous and aggregated manner, from surfing habits of Opera Mini mobile web browser users in India during the month of September 2012.
To view the whole report on India surfing habits and top web categories, click here!
Growth
In September 2012, there were over 207.2 million Opera Mini and Opera Mobile users globally. Out of this number, more than 19.6 million were Opera Mobile users, and the rest were Opera Mini users. Compared to September 2011, Opera Mini and Opera Mobile combined grew more than 35% year over year. The Opera Mini users viewed over 116 billion pages in September 2012.
To read the full report, please visit http://www.opera.com/smw/.