By now, you should have cottoned on to the fact I love Opera. Their mobile web browsers are, in my opinion, the best ones out there. And despite the fact I use Opera Mobile (’cos I can, ‘cos I use Window Mobile), their most important web browser is, without a doubt, Opera Mini. It’s the single most downloaded app in the history of mobile phones, ever, and because it’s a Java app, it can run on any phone that’ll run Java. Which is, let’s be honest, damn near every modern phone in the world. Except the iPhone. Because Apple are being awkward about letting other browsers on their phones, and won’t approve it. Today, we have some idea of just how big Opera Mini has become, thanks to statistics published on Opera’s website, relating to usage of Mini in November, 2009. And they’re, erm, quite big. Quite shockingly big, in fact. Let’s start with the worldwide stats, and with the smallest number, specifically, the number of users Opera Mini now has. And since that smallest comes in at 41.7 million, the other numbers are going to be particularly huge.Like properly huge… Let’s look at actual pages visited by Opera Mini users next. How many different web pages have been viewed by users of the weeny-yet-powerful web browser? 18.8 BILLION, that’s how many. That’s a 231% increase on November last year, which is, er, not an insubstantial figure! And finally, for the worldwide stats, we come to actual data traffic. How much data has Opera Mini shifted through the networks’ cell towers, down to users’ phones? Well, I’ve put this one last, because it highlights one of the most important features of Opera Mini. Y’see, 285 million MB of data traffic’s been generated for the various networks round the world. But the big thing about Opera Mini is that it minimises the amount of data shifted down to users’ phones, by rendering web pages on their own servers, which causes less congestion on the network, and makes people’s data usage a lot cheaper. How much data would have been shifted if they didn’t do that server-side rendering? 2.6 billion MB, or 2.6petabytes, if we’re being pedantic. So, basically, users’ data bills would’ve been about ten times bigger, if they didn’t do that server-side rendering. That’s reason number 1 for it being so popular. Reason number 2 can be found in the top ten list of phones using Opera Mini in the UK. There is not a sniff of a smartphone in there (well, other than the 5800). No HTC Hero. No Nokia N97. Nothing. What there is, though, is a collection of feature phones, including old stalwarts like the Nokia 6300. Hell, the nearly-three-year-old LG Shine is at the number 3 spot, for god’s sake! And there’s your reason number 2: Opera Mini will run on any phone that has Java, so even someone with an old, generally pretty rubbish LG Shine can get the exact same full internet access as someone with a top-end smartphone. 
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Shockingly massive usage stats for Opera Mini -said Opera
By now, you should have cottoned on to the fact I love Opera. Their mobile web browsers are, in my opinion, the best ones out there. And despite the fact I use Opera Mobile (’cos I can, ‘cos I use Window Mobile), their most important web browser is, without a doubt, Opera Mini. It’s the single most downloaded app in the history of mobile phones, ever, and because it’s a Java app, it can run on any phone that’ll run Java. Which is, let’s be honest, damn near every modern phone in the world. Except the iPhone. Because Apple are being awkward about letting other browsers on their phones, and won’t approve it. Today, we have some idea of just how big Opera Mini has become, thanks to statistics published on Opera’s website, relating to usage of Mini in November, 2009. And they’re, erm, quite big. Quite shockingly big, in fact. Let’s start with the worldwide stats, and with the smallest number, specifically, the number of users Opera Mini now has. And since that smallest comes in at 41.7 million, the other numbers are going to be particularly huge.Like properly huge… Let’s look at actual pages visited by Opera Mini users next. How many different web pages have been viewed by users of the weeny-yet-powerful web browser? 18.8 BILLION, that’s how many. That’s a 231% increase on November last year, which is, er, not an insubstantial figure! And finally, for the worldwide stats, we come to actual data traffic. How much data has Opera Mini shifted through the networks’ cell towers, down to users’ phones? Well, I’ve put this one last, because it highlights one of the most important features of Opera Mini. Y’see, 285 million MB of data traffic’s been generated for the various networks round the world. But the big thing about Opera Mini is that it minimises the amount of data shifted down to users’ phones, by rendering web pages on their own servers, which causes less congestion on the network, and makes people’s data usage a lot cheaper. How much data would have been shifted if they didn’t do that server-side rendering? 2.6 billion MB, or 2.6petabytes, if we’re being pedantic. So, basically, users’ data bills would’ve been about ten times bigger, if they didn’t do that server-side rendering. That’s reason number 1 for it being so popular. Reason number 2 can be found in the top ten list of phones using Opera Mini in the UK. There is not a sniff of a smartphone in there (well, other than the 5800). No HTC Hero. No Nokia N97. Nothing. What there is, though, is a collection of feature phones, including old stalwarts like the Nokia 6300. Hell, the nearly-three-year-old LG Shine is at the number 3 spot, for god’s sake! And there’s your reason number 2: Opera Mini will run on any phone that has Java, so even someone with an old, generally pretty rubbish LG Shine can get the exact same full internet access as someone with a top-end smartphone. 
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment