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Study: Brazil Leads Mobile Web Use in Latin America

By David Sims August 20, 2008
Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela are leading Latin America in the adoption of the mobile Web, according to the most recent “State of the Mobile Web” report issued by Opera Software.
 
The report specifies the top-10 most popular sites, ranked according to unique visitors in each of the top countries for mobile Web usage in Latin America. Google leads the way in most countries, followed by some of the most popular social-networking sites.
 
Opera’s “State of the Mobile Web” report is available each month at www.opera.com/mobile_report/ in both HTML and PDF formats.
 
The report says that in July the mobile Web “continued to expand worldwide.” The number of people using Opera Mini, the vendor’s mobile Web browser, reported to be 15.8 million unique monthly users, “grew 9.4 percent month over month, while page views grew almost 16 percent in the same period,” the report says.
 
Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive officer of Opera, said while the pace of adoption in Latin America is increasing rapidly, “The reasons behind this growth are two-fold. First, consumers are willing to purchase data plans because of the cost savings associated with data compression. They are able to surf more. Second, 80 percent of phones in Latin America can support a lightweight Web browser.”
 
For Latin America, Brazil leads the way in mobile Web usage, followed by Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina.
 
However, Argentinean soccer icons do not, in fact, lead the way in modern cell phone usage, as anybody knows who caught a glimpse of Diego Maradona, in the stands to watch the Argentina-Brazil Olympic soccer match, talking on a cell phone that looks like it was swiped from the Smithsonian. What, he kept the one he had when he scored the Hand of God goal against England in the 1986 World Cup?
 
The study found that while Orkut, metroFLOG and hi5 are the most prevalent social-networking sites in Latin America, Facebook is the fourth-most-popular site in Venezuela.
 
Local domains are few and far between in the Top 10. Brazil leads all Latin American countries with two, while most have one or no local domains in the top 10.
 
Last month’s report found that six out of the most popular phones models for Web browsing with Opera Mini are from Nokia, two are from Sony Ericsson, one is from BlackBerry, and one is from Samsung.
 
In the United States, nine of the top 10 phones for Opera Mini are BlackBerries. The report can be viewed in its entirety from http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/.
 
“People want the Web on their phone regardless of the type of phone they have,” said Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive officer of Opera. “Our list of top phones shows both smartphones and feature phones. It proves that given the right experience, many more people will use the Web on their phone. Accessing the Web on your phone is not a luxury limited to who has the most expensive phone model.”
 
Don’t forget to check out IoTevolutionworld’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is The Compelling ROI Benefits of Contact Center Quality and Performance Management Technologies, brought to you by Voice Print International.

David Sims is a contributing editor for IoTevolutionworld. To read more of David�s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for IoTevolutionworld here.
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