The return of mobile shopping

According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, there was a clear increase in the number of mobile visits to Amazon.com towards the end of the year, compared to earlier in 2010. Although the mobile shopping trend has not yet kicked in in Africa, mobile browsing is on the increase.

With all the world’s e-commerce in their hands, mobile shoppers truly know how to make the most of the Web from their phones.

According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, there was a clear increase in the number of mobile visits to Amazon.com towards the end of the year, compared to earlier in 2010.

The countries showing the clearest trend among the Opera Mini users were the United States and Germany. Shoppers in these countries doubled their number of page views to Amazon.com towards the end of the year, as compared to the start of 2010. This Christmas was truly the season of the mobile shopper.

In Africa, the mobile shopping trend has not kicked in, but growth in mobile browsing has shot up:

* From December 2009 to December 2010, page views in the top 10 countries of Africa increased by 365%, unique users increased by 176% and data transferred increased by 331%.

* Sudan and Zimbabwe lead the top 10 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (4908.2 % and 2321.6 %, respectively). * In the top 10 African countries, Facebook and Google vie for the number one ranking.

The sharp increase in shopping in the US and Germany over the last year was accelerated by the traditional holiday shopping frenzy. This is especially visible in the daily number of visits to Amazon.com during the U.S. shopping weekend starting with ‚Black Friday‚ and ending with ‚Cyber Monday‚ . In both monthly and daily numbers, the increase is significant and shows the willingness to shop and browse online stores even on the go.

‚It is not hard to imagine the benefits of the full Web right at your fingertips when shopping in a crowded store,‚ said Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software ‚’Is this TV on sale really a good offer, or can I get a better deal online? What are people saying on the Web about the advantages of this computer model compared to the more expensive one?’ Full access to the Web via Opera Mini–even under difficult conditions such as crowded cellular networks–puts power back in the hands of the consumers.‚

Global trends: * In December 2010, Opera Mini had over 85.5 million users, a 6.8% increase from November 2010. Since December 2009, the number of unique users has increased 84.7%.

* Opera Mini users viewed over 46.7 billion pages in December 2010. Since November, page views have gone up 4.6%.

* Since December 2009, page views have increased 125.5%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 6.5 petabytes of data in December.

* Shoppers are returning to the mobile Web after a long decline. In March 2010, Opera Mini users reversed the downward trend shopping sites have seen in the later years, and usage spikes are easily seen on the big shopping days of the year.

More results can be obtained in the report: http://www.opera.com/smw/2010/12/