'Net Features : opera

Opera's State of the Mobile Web

Mike Phillips — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:43:00 GMT

Popular mobile browsing software provider Opera released their State of the Mobile Web report, and it shows that mobile is, unsurprisingly, on the rise. Users of the Opera Mini mobile browsers increased 136 percent from a year ago. Perhaps the most interesting numbers come in the form of page views. Users are not just getting on the mobile Web more, but viewing more content. Overall, users viewed 227 percent more pages on the mobile Web, compared to one year ago.

A large section of the report focused on Southeast Asia, where overall page views in the top nine countries increased a whopping 459 percent, and overall users increased 119 percent. In the U.S., the numbers are less, but still impressive. Overall page views are up 151 percent from 2008. The top 10 mobile sites visited by U.S. users of Opera Mini are:

Google.com
Facebook.com
MySpace.com
Wikipedia.org
YouTube.com
Yahoo.com
NYTimes.com
My.Opera.com
CNN.com
Accuweather.com

It's hardly surprising that Google is leading the way. However, in Russia and China, Yandex and Baidu lead the way, and Yahoo! is a close second in India - one of the fastest growing mobile countries with a stunning 531 percent increase in page views and 128 percent increase in unique users.

An increase in mobile usage is often attributed to more smartphones on the market, making faster and easier mobile browsing. It's interesting to note that Opera users are using BlackBerry handsets the most. In fact, in the U.S., 7 of the top 10 handsets are BlackBerry.

Mobile browsing continues to rise. Website owners should take note of the increase in page views. It means that users are spending more time on mobile, and expanding their browsing. While this study is limited to Opera Mini users, it's a good indication that a website's reach is growing. And to take full advantage of this, pages need to be optimized to handle this mobile traffic, and a mobile presence needs to go beyond a landing page - users are digging deeper.

January '09 Browser Market Share

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:50:00 GMT

NetApplications released browser market share numbers for January 2009. As you might expect, Internet Explorer still has a hefty lead with 67.55% total market share, followed by Firefox (21.53%), Safari (8.29%), Chrome (1.12%) and Opera (0.70%).

The real story in all this, as others have mentioned, is the substantial growth seen by Firefox over the past year and the general decline in usage of Internet Explorer. Back in March 2008, IE had a nearly 75% maket share while Firefox had nearly 18%. Compare that to the information presented above and you'll see the dramatic nature of the shift. While the September release of Google's Chrome has made a slight dent in the total browser share, Safari has grown nearly 70% since March 2008,

Firefox With 20% Market Share In November (2008)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:02:00 GMT

Net Applications reports that for the first time ever, the Firefox browser exceeded a 20% share for a full month. Microsoft's IE still led the way with 69.77%. Firefox at 20.78% was followed by Safari (7.13%), Chrome (0.83%) and Opera (0.71%) for the top five browsers.

According to Mozilla CEO John Lilly, ""Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla. It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible. The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way."

Net Applications analysis highlights four potential reasons for the increase, including the U.S. election (usage increased in the days surrounding November 4), Thanksgiving (Firefox share increase starting on the 26th into the next month), extra weekend days (November had ten weekend days instead of the average 8.57), and higher unemployment.