Small world on small screens

Company Brief

Mumbai, May 26, 2011

There is no doubt that social media is king of the mobile phone. Fresh results from the Opera State of the Mobile Web report reveal that the social component is dominant in the surfing habits of the top 20 mobile-surfing countries.

Social networking has become the go-to function on the mobile Web, and different regions have their favorite sites. The Western world loves Facebook, while Russia and other CIS countries have taken vKontakte to their hearts. Indonesia and the Philippines are on top of user participation on social networks. More than 77% of mobile web users in these countries visit Facebook and spend a lot of time socializing with friends online.

Popularity in terms of usage is not always associated with very high page views. In India, for example, Facebook is used by 42% of mobile users but only accounts for 27% of all page views in the country. Facebook is also the second most popular site visited by Opera Mini users from India.

The India story—the power of portable Internet

"Only 27% page views for the 2nd most popular domain, Facebook, is not surprising. Traditionally Indians are known to spend their time on search and email related activities on the mobile web", adds Sunil Kamath, Director of Sales for India and SAARC, Opera Software. "With the boom in the handheld-devices market, Indians have shown a major transformation in usage patterns. Today, availability of content and ease of access have catapulted a range of content-rich portals to rise up in the most visited domains list".

In comparison with some popular social-networking sites:

• Facebook: page-view growth since April 2010: 1686 %

• Orkut: page-view growth since April 2010: -0.7 % (decline in usage)

• Twitter: page-view growth since April 2010: 191 %

Content is making Indian users click:

• Zedge: page-view growth since April 2010: 7,450 %

• Getjar: page-view growth since April 2010: 290 %

• Wap.in: page.view growth since April 2010: 155%

*Mobile2Day statistics for April 2010 not available

Indian mobile web users are flocking to content-driven portals. Among the top 10 popular domains, download portals such as Mobile2day, Getjar and Zedge stand tall in the list. Other content-rich portals that are popular include YouTube, Wikipedia, Vuclip and search favorite Google.

The Opera Mini browser continues to grow worldwide and in India. In April 2011, there were over 107.1 million Opera Mini users globally, a 4.6% increase from March 2011. This puts the browser firmly in the top position as the world's most popular mobile browser.

In India too, user growth continues to scale up with 214.6% growth over last year. The following are some more statistics from India:

Snapshot: India

• Page-view growth since April 2010: 267.3 %

• Unique-user growth since April 2010: 214.6 %

• Data transfer growth since April 2010: 209.4 %

• Page views per user: 425

• Data transferred per user (MB): 7

• Data transferred per page view (KB): 18

Top 10 sites in India (unique users)

1. google.com

2. facebook.com

3. youtube.com

4. orkut.com

5. mobile2day.com

6. vuclip.com

7. getjar.com

8. wikipedia.org

9. zedge.net

10. yahoo.com

Top handsets in India for April 2011

1. Nokia 2690

2. Nokia 5130 XpressMusic

3. Nokia 2700c

4. Nokia 2730c

5. Nokia X2

6. Nokia 3110c

7. Nokia 5233

8. Nokia 7210 Supernova

9. Micromax Q5

10. Nokia N70

For further information, please contact:

Corporate Voice | Weber Shandwick

Payal Tiwari

Mobile: +919930811164

Email: payal@corvoshandwick.co.in