Before I begin, here are a few known facts about the consumption world of today:
- More smart mobile devices are in use today than ever.
- Mobile web traffic is at its highest rate in history.
- If you don’t think that the mobile industry is exploding, you are a fucking moron.
Yes, I know that the last one was more of an opinion than a fact, but if you didn’t realized how mobile is rising by now, you probably don’t know what is the difference between a fact and an opinion.
Okay… After hopefully I didn’t offended too many of you, let’s get into the main reason we are all here- The Norwegian-based company Opera has issued a press release where it stated that its current browser user-base has surpassed the 200 million, a rise of 47% in a year.
Can I get a one loud “FUCK YEAH, Opera”? No? Still insulted from before? Okay, let’s move on…
The 200 million milestone is VERY impressive when taking into account that Google Chrome, which considered to be the most popular browser, has more than 310 million users. You would think that Chrome’s user-base supposed to be triple (or more) the size of little Opera’s, but the black-on-white stats says otherwise.
Opera also released a very thorough and interesting report on the state of mobile in Africa, stressing how fast the mobile-web is growing in this region. In most African countries, Opera’s penetration and usage has at least doubled within a year. In Libya for example, the number of Opera users has grown by a holy-shit rate of 323,267%!
The report is also emphasizing how Google and Facebook are the total kings of Africa’s most popular sites as in almost all countries they are the first top two most visited websites (Facebook is mostly number one).
Those latest numbers are being released while in the past few months there were some rumors that Facebook intends to buy Opera. Although that by this point in time nothing really occurred, in light of this recent report it would actually make a lot of sense.
For starters, it will certainly reinforce Facebook’s mobile state as most of Facebook users are using mobile devices. Second, as Facebook’s second quarter results reveals, most of the recent social network’s growth is being driven from emerging markets. Opera’s established hold in Africa can surely assist Facebook to reach for more engaging audiences.
But whether if Mark Zuckerberg will open his wallet or not, it seems that Opera is successfully riding on the wave of the mobile rise.
