Opera, one of the world’s major browser developers, and a leader in the field of content platforms, presented today the State of Mobile Web 2019 report, which gives a detailed look at the digital landscape of the African region.

The report reveals that in Q1-2019, the Opera browsers and standalone news app were used by nearly 120 million internet users in Africa and by more than 350 million people globally. Moreover, the report shows that Opera experienced a user growth of twenty six percent over a one-year period.

“We are thrilled to see that our mobile browsers and news app have grown by 25 million monthly users in the last year in Africa” said Jørgen Arnesen, Head of Marketing and Distribution at Opera. “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”.

In the 2019 edition of the State of the Mobile Web report also looked into the use of the Opera Mini browser and the Opera browser for Android.

The 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 ten 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% of browsing sessions of people who use Opera Mini in Africa in Q1-2019, are to 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 gives 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 USD 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 takes a look at the trends of news and video consumption across Africa. This includes analysing 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 in the first quarter of the year.

Video content is also becoming more popular among people who use the Opera News app. The report shows that people spend 50% 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 thousand videos uploaded in different languages such as English, Portoguese, French, Arabic and Swahilli.

Expanding beyond browsing to fuel the digital transformation

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, Opera 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 platforms.

Available online

The full version of the State of Mobile Web 2019 report is available to read online or for download by clicking here.