Mobile web growing fast in Southeast Asia

Fast facts - Opera spotlights Southeast Asia in its ongoing geographic snapshots. Indonesia ranks first (and second worldwide) in usage with almost 330% user growth and 827% page view growth in 2008.

- For the month of October 2008, monthly consumer users (those who download Opera Mini on their own without being offered a version from their operator) increased to 21 million. Page views came in at almost 5 billion, growing 326% since October 2007. Data transfers, which can be used to infer both potential consumer cost savings and potential carrier revenues generated, hit 73.7 million MB (compressed). This is a 490% growth rate since October 2007.

- Egypt continues its meteoric rise since its debut last month. The United Kingdom and Poland move down in the rankings to make way for the African newcomer. Report findings

Mobile Web access continues its march towards surpassing desktop Web access. Across the world, more people are using their phone to go online. This trend is clear as unique users, page views and data transfers for consumer Opera Mini users have continued to rise. Yet we also see this evolving in Southeast Asia, our spotlighted region this month.

In many of these Southeast Asian countries the mobile Web exists not because it complements existing means of access, but rather because it replaces them. Page view growth and pages per user are an interesting metric to see how much people use Opera Mini to browse the Web. It is interesting to note that page views per user in Indonesia and the Philippines are significantly higher than the worldwide numbers. In fact page views grew more than 1120% in the Philippines this year.

While the overall rankings of countries change regionally or globally, as they did with Egypt vaulting over Poland and the United Kingdom, certain sites tend to remain dominant. Social networking and search rank high on the top sites for each country, just as they do on the desktop Web. As quality mobile browsers proliferate, users tend to access the same sites and services. This emergence of One Web will only continue as the lines separating device types such as PCs and mobile phones increasingly blur.

Supporting quotes

"There is an incredible appetite in Southeast Asia for the mobile Web," says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Impressive growth figures for usage, data transfers and page views underscore this demand. Helping users reach the sites that are important in their daily lives is our main priority and commitment with Opera Mini."