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Opera’s “State of the Mobile Web” report revealed that Google (News - Alert) enjoys a commanding lead in mobile Web search in the United States.

 

Accounting for more than 9 percent of all page views on the mobile Web in the United States, Google’s search portal easily outpaces rivals Yahoo! and Bing, with 4.3 percent and 0.03 percent of all page views, respectively.

 

Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software (News - Alert) said, “Search and social networking are the twin pillars of mobile Web use worldwide. While Google performs well globally, we also see several local search engines, such as Yandex in Russia and Ukraine, and Baidu in China, have impressive results in their key markets.”

 

Opera’s “State of the Mobile Web” 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/ (English only). In addition to search trends on the mobile Web, the report highlights global statistics and profiles the Middle East.

 

 

In January 2010, 50 million people used Opera Mini, a 7.4 percent increase from December 2009 and up 149 percent compared to January 2009.

 

Opera Mini users viewed more than 23.3 billion pages in January 2010. Since December, page views have gone up 12.7 percent. Since January 2009, page views have increased 208 percent.

 

In January 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 337 million MB of data for operators worldwide. Since December, the data consumed went up by 7.0 percent. Data in Opera Mini is compressed by up to 90 percent. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 3.1 PB of data in January. Since January 2009, data traffic is up 176 percemt.

 

The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage in January 2010 were: Russia, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, China, South Africa, the United States, Nigeria, Vietnam and the United Kingdom.

 

Looking at the top 10 countries according to Opera Mini usage (in Part 2 of the report), Nigeria in only its second month back on the list after a 3-month absence — overtook Vietnam in January.

 

Opera Mini users in Vietnam and India are the biggest users of search portals. In Vietnam, 30.9 percent percent of page views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 63.6 search-portal pages per month. In India, 22.1 percent percent of page views are from search portals, and users viewed an average of 75.8 search-portal pages per month.

Opera Mini users in Ukraine use search portals the least: 0.8 percent of page views are from search portals, and users view only an average of 6.1 search-portal pages per month.

Middle East trends

 

The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in the Middle East are Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Jordan, Oman, Lebanon, Iraq and Kuwait.

Some numbers: From January 2009 to January 2010, page views in the top 10 countries of the Middle East increased by 164 percent, unique users increased by 137 percent and data transferred increased by 114 percent.

 

Since our last spotlight on the Middle East in July 2009, Syria jumped from 4 to 2, United Arab Emirates jumped from 5 to 4, Jordan jumped from 7 to 6, Lebanon jumped from 9 to 8 and Iraq is new to the list.

Growth rates in the Middle East: Lebanon and Syria lead the top 10 Middle Eastern countries in terms of page-view growth (753.6 percent and 693.8 percent, respectively). United Arab Emirates and Iraq lead the top 10 Middle Eastern countries in growth of unique users (655.6 percent and 558.3 percent, respectively). Lebanon leads the top 10 Middle Eastern countries in page views per user, with each user browsing 557 pages on average each month.

Among mobile Web users in the Middle East, Google is at the top of the rankings in 9 out of the top 10 countries. In Israel, Google is number 2 (behind Facebook (News - Alert)).

 

Facebook is also very popular, taking the 2 spot in six of the top 10 countries, the 3 spot in three of the top 10 countries, and the 1 spot in one of the top 10 countries.

 

By far, Opera Mini users in the Middle East prefer Nokia (News - Alert) handsets. Looking at the top 10 countries in the Middle East, and the top 10 handsets in each of those countries, only 9 out of the 100 spots were filled by non-Nokia handsets.