Opera Mini’s efforts for the first time topped 200 million users per month with a 47 percent increase from last year, driven by its distribution deals with handset makers and telecom providers in Africa America and Asia.
Opera Mini revealed that it passed the landmark in June 2012, with 92 percent 183M users, of the 200 million, being accessed by users with feature phones.
The company, known for its data compression technology and its affordable rates for pre-pay users, said it served up more than 2015 million MB of data, which is up 88 percent from last year.
It added that page views also increased by 55 percent annually, as users visited more than 115 billion pages from their device.
Out of 53 African countries, 36 countries more than doubled their Opera Mini user base in one year.
Last year, Libya grew the most in every category of Opera mini usage, including users page views and data consumption.
Across Africa, data growth seems to outpace page view growth, a good example would be Cote d’ivoire with an increase of 760 percent in data use and an increase of 744 percent in page views, meaning African users are browsing larger pages and likely using more advanced sites.
Lars Boilesen Opera’s chief executive said the browser is more than a tool for browsing the Web, and that it provides a service that is reliable, cheap and delivers information to just about anyone with a phone.
Opera Mini is a Web browser that was purposely designed for mobile phones ordinarily unable to run a Web browser. Currently, it is applicable on smartphones and personal digital assistants, PDA’s.They app began as a pilot project in 2005 and after limited release, was officially launched worldwide on January 24, 2006.
