Facebook most popular on the mobile Web in Africa

In Africa, Facebook has taken a strong lead and ranks as the most popular site in six out of the top 10 countries. Opera Mini has garnered more than 41.7 million users worldwide showing a 5.3 percent jump compared to the previous month, according to the State of the Mobile Web report for November 2009. The number of page-views in November 2009 went up 9.5% and data consumption increased 8.3% compared to the previous month.
The report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/. In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, the report highlights trends in Africa and examines regions of fastest growth of Opera Mini.

Global trends:
– In November 2009, more than 41.7 million people used Opera Mini, a 5.3% increase from October 2009 and more than 154% compared to November 2008.
– Those 41.7 million people viewed more than 18.8 billion pages in November 2009. Since October, page-views have gone up 9.5%. Since November 2008, page-views have increased 231%.
– Opera Mini users generated over 285 million megabytes of data for operators worldwide in November 2009. Since October, the data consumed went up by 8.3%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.6 petabytes of data in November. Since November 2008, data traffic is up 213%.
– The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Vietnam and Poland.

Trends in Africa:
– Facebook has taken the lead in Africa; it is the most popular site visited by Opera Mini users in six out of 10 countries and the #2 site in the three countries where it isn’t #1. Google is also very popular, and is ahead of Facebook in a few of the top 10 African countries. Yahoo and Wikipedia are also ubiquitous in the top 10 lists of the various African countries.
– The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Africa are (in order): South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia.
– Some numbers regarding Africa: From November 2008 to November 2009, page views in the top 10 countries increased by 374%, unique users increased by 177%, and data transferred increased by 183%.
– Since our last spotlight on Africa, Kenya jumped from #4 to #3, Ghana jumped from #11 to #5 and Ivory Coast jumped from #8 to #7.
– Growth rates in Africa: Ghana and Kenya lead the top 10 African countries in terms of page-view growth. Ghana and Ivory Coast lead the top 10 African countries in growth of unique users. Kenya leads the top 10 African countries in page-views, with each user browsing 525 pages on average each month.
– Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets are extremely popular in Africa, but Samsung is a significant exception, boasting the most popular phone used by Opera Mini users in South Africa, Zambia and Namibia.

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