Opera, one of the world’s major browser developers and a leader in the field of content platforms, today presented Report on State of Mobile Web 2019, showing that in quarter one, Q1-2019, the Opera browsers and standalone news app were used by nearly 120 million internet users in Africa and more than 350 million people globally.
The Report also shows that Opera experienced a user growth of more than 25 percent over a one-year period. Jorgen Arnesen, Head, Marketing and Distribution at Opera, commenting on the Report, said: “We are thrilled to see that our mobile browsers and news app has grown by 25 million monthly users in the one last year in Africa.
“The new Opera News app has led this positive growth, as well as the introduction of new features to our mobile browsers such as a built-in VPN and crypto wallet. The successful partnerships Opera has with major smartphone manufacturers in Africa have also contributed to the massive growth”.
Mobile browser used more than other apps The State of Mobile Web 2019 Report shows that mobile browsing is one of the most popular activities among African internet users. For example, in South Africa, nine out of 10 people use their mobile browser everyday, an activity they prefer over the use of other applications. State of Mobile Web 2019 also revealed that on average, Africans using Opera spend more than 30 minutes browsing on a daily basis.
Moreover, the Report showed that 31 percent of browsing sessions of people who use Opera Mini in Africa in Q1-2019, are in social media platform domains like Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, followed by search engine websites like Google and entertainment and sport websites.
100 million dollars saved on mobile data
In the State of Mobile Web 2019, Opera gave detailed insight into the use of the data savings feature in the Opera Mini browser. In the report, Opera compared the average prices of mobile data in twenty countries in Africa. The results revealed that the data compression mode in Opera Mini saved users nearly 100 million US dollars of data cost in 2018.
In this analysis, Opera also compared the cost of data in some African countries with the cost of mobile data in India and Germany. The outcome of this analysis showed that South Africans pay six times more per gigabyte of Mobile data than Indians.
Rapid changing news and video consumption landscape.
The Report looked at the trends of news and video consumption across Africa. This includes analyzing the usage of its standalone Opera News app, which grew from launch to over 20 million users in a period of one year. Categories like breaking news, local news, and entertainment were the favourites of the users during the period under review.
Video content is also becoming more popular among people who use the Opera News app.
The Report indicates that people spend 50 per cent of in-app time in Opera News watching videos on Instaclips, the recently added video feature on the news app. The usage of Instaclips keeps growing since its test launch in December 2018. In Q1-2019, Instaclips registered a total of 122,000 videos uploaded in different languages such as English, Portoguese, French, Arabic and Swahilli.
Expanding beyond browsing to fuel the digital transformation
Arnesen noted that Opera’s commitment to the African digital transformation has already started. “Beyond the development of its mobile browsers and standalone news app, Opera has made major investments in the African region expanding its services to other technology areas such as
FinTech and digital advertising.
“In 2018, we announced the launch of OKash, a fintech solution for micro-lending that quickly got traction among mobile internet users in Kenya. Today, OKash ranks among the most downloaded micro-lending applications among Kenyans and its user base keeps on growing.”
In May 2019, Opera announced the introduction of Opera Ads, a new advertising platform that allows media agencies and publishers to run more targeted marketing campaigns across the Opera platform.
