OSLO, NORWAY – Mobile Web access continues its march toward surpassing desktop Web access, according to a new report from browser developer Opera Software ASA. Worldwide, more people are using their phones to go online. The trend is clear as unique users, page views and data transfers for Opera Mini users have continued to rise, particularly in Southeast Asia.According to the Opera report, in many Southeast Asian countries the mobile Web exists not because it complements existing means of access, but because it replaces them. Page-view growth and pages per user provide an interesting perspective on how much people use portable browsers to interact with the Web. Page views per user in Indonesia and the Philippines are significantly higher than the worldwide numbers. In fact, page views grew more than 1,120-percent in the Philippines during the past year. Page views in Indonesia grew 827-percent in the same period.
For the month of October alone, page views came in at almost 5 billion worldwide, growing 326-percent over October 2007 levels. Data transfers, which can be used to infer both potential consumer cost savings and potential carrier revenues, hit 73.7 million MB. The figure represents a 490-percent growth over October 2007.
“There is an incredible appetite in Southeast Asia for the mobile Web,” said Opera Chief Executive Officer Jon von Tetzchner. “Impressive growth figures for usage, data transfers and page views underscore this demand.”
While the overall rankings of countries shift almost constantly within regions, certain sites tend to remain dominant worldwide. Social networking and search rank high on the list of 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” is expected to continue as the lines separating device types such as PCs and mobile phones increasingly blur.
