Mobile Web picks up
2008 was the year when mobile Internet first started to gain momentum, thanks in large part to the increasing quality and coverage offered by the mobile network providers. So effective were they in fact that they started to throw a shadow over the fixed-line broadband providers for sheer numbers of subscribers. And while the trend is global there is also significant uptake of mobile web browsing in South Africa as well.
According to the most recent State of the Mobile Web report from Opera Software – makers of the Opera Mini mobile browser – the company noted that October 2008 saw almost five billion page views using the Opera Mini web browser. That is an increase of 326% over October 2007 and a trend that looks likely to increase well into 2009.
As far as web pages visited go, South Africans favour social networking sites such as Facebook, search sites such as Yahoo and Google and Mxit when browsing on their mobile phones.
The most popular websites visited by South Africans using their mobile phones during October of 2008 were:
1 – facebook.com
2 – google.com
3 – wikipedia.org
4 – gamejump.com
5 – yahoo.com
6 – my.opera.com
7 – gmail.com
8 – youtube.com
9 – mxit.co.za
10 – webmail.co.za
In comparison the top ten sites visited by US browsers were:
1 – google.com
2 – myspace.com
3 – facebook.com
4 – wikipedia.org
5 – yahoo.com
6 – nytimes.com
7 – gamejump.com
8 – espn.com
9 – youtube.com
10 – accuweather.com
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