Opera unveiled its 2019 State of Mobile Web Report for Africa with 40 percent Kenyans said to have used opera mini browser to access online content and social media sites such as Facebook according to the survey. The report which provides an in-depth view on how the African region consumed digital content on the web with statistics indicating that eight out of ten people accessed Facebook with opera mini on a daily basis accounting for 73 million browsing results to social media platforms in the first quota of 2019.
Data from the report indicate that websites which were often accessed include the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, followed by search engine websites like Google, and entertainment and sport websites with social media platform taking the lions’ share.
Unlike Kenyans who seemed to access social media more, our Tanzanian counterparts were more interested on what YouTube had to offer from their mobile browsers accounting for 23 percent of the Opera Mini user base in the country. In comparison, only 17 percent of Opera Mini user base in Kenya were interested in watching YouTube.
Opera mini is popularly known to minimize data usage while accessing web content – a feature that has driven many online users in Africa to utilize the browser considering high costs of data bundles. While data costs on many carriers in Kenya for example has been subsidized to consumers who opt into other products from service providers such as Telkom Kenya’s free WhatsApp offer, costs still play a major role on how people across the continent access web content.
Figures indicate that data consumers across Africa who used opera browser to access web content saved an impressive 77 petabytes (77 million gigabytes) of mobile data in 2018 due to the data saving features in Opera’s products.
While speaking on the report, Opera’s Head of Marketing and Distribution, Jørgen Arnesen said they were happy to see the African region including Kenya start gaining traction. He also added that it was a significant milestone to their commitment in growing and developing the African digital transformation.
“Additionally, our mobile browser saves on costs as one gigabyte of data last up to nine times more making it affordable and convenient to Kenyans and African countries as whole,” concluded Mr. Arnesen.
The report claims that close to 120 million internet users in Africa utilized the opera browser and a standalone news app within the first quota of 2019 with more than 350 million people using the same services globally. Moreover, the State of Mobile Web 2019 shows that Opera experienced a user growth of more than twenty five percent over a one-year period.
Opera’s offering in the African region has expanded from the mobile browser and news app to major investments especially in Kenya’s FinTech and digital advertising industry. The State of Mobile Web 2019 also revealed that on average, Africans using Opera spend more than 30 minutes browsing on a daily basis.