Top-ten lists highlight European local mobile surfing habits

Oslo, Norway – December 14, 2012

Is it true that some European countries really are sports crazy? And, who are the most news hungry of all Europeans? In this month’s State of the Mobile Web report, Opera Software maps out the usage of local websites all over Europe and reveals the differences in mobile web usage among countries.

 

According to the anonymous and aggregated data from the Opera Mini web browser, Romania and Spain are the top sports-surfing countries in Europe. They each have a local sports website on top of their top-10 list, unlike other European countries where sports sites appear lower in the lists.

‘News and Entertainment” is clearly the most popular local website category throughout Europe, where all countries have at least one pure news website in the top-10 list of local websites. Croatia and Norway are the most keen on news, having a total of eight news websites in their top-10 lists.

Moving a bit eastwards in Europe, portals and web content aggregators seem to be more interesting for mobile web surfers. Education is also a category that shows up more frequently in the eastern European countries than the western European ones.

To read the full report, and to see the top-10 list in each European country, go to www.opera.com/smw.

Some other findings:

  • Germany stands out by having a community site on top of its local website list.
  • Spain and Poland are the only two European countries with a local social network in the top-10 list.
  • The Greek seem to be very interested in the weather, with a weather website in third place.

In November 2012, the consumer base of the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers increased in unique users. In all, more than 215 million people used Opera Mini or Opera Mobile in November, a 29 % year over year increase in unique users. The 215 million users viewed over 130 billion webpages in November, a 47% increase from November 2011.