Overview

• 23% mobile of MobilityNigeria’s traffic in January 2011 was from mobile devices
• 426 devices on 425 networks from 110 countries accessed Mobility Nigeria in January 2011
• 44.6% of devices are wi-fi enabled
• 5.9% of devices accessed MobilityNigeria on wifi
• 24.8% were QWERTY phones
• 22.0% had touchscreens
• 36.9% are smartphones

Top 5 Phones

Blackberry 9700 Bold topples the Nokia 5800 from the top spot! Another Blackberry smartphone features in the top 5 list, making this list an all Nokia and Blackberry affair.

1. Blackberry 9700 – 3.8%
2. Nokia 5130 Classic – 3.6%
3. Nokia E63/Nokia 5800 – 2.8% each
4. Nokia 3110 Classic – 2.7%
5. Blackberry 8520 – 2.5%

Top 5 Brands

1. Nokia – 47.7%
2. BlackBerry – 13.2%
3. Apple – 8.3%
4. Sony Ericsson – 4.6%
5. Samsung – 4.2%

Top 5 Operating Systems

1. Symbian – 27.3%
2. Series 40 – 21.1%
3. BlackBerry – 13.2%
4. iOS – 8.3%
5. Android OS – 2.4%

Top 5 Networks

1. MTN Nigeria – 32.1%
2. Etisalat Nigeria – 18.8%Glo Nigeria – 8.4%
3. KPN Netherlands – 4.1%
4. Airtel Nigeria – 3.9%

Top 5 Countries

1. Nigeria – 63.9%
2. USA – 6.2%
3. Netherlands 4.3%
4. Canada – 4.3%
5. UK – 3.5%
6. India – 2.6%

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Don’t forget, this is all MobilityNigeria.com traffic only, though available industry statistics indicate that this is fairly representative of mobile web traffic for the country as a whole.

New this month: This month’s report includes mobile OS traffic! Find out how Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian and other mobile operating systems stand.

Overview

• 21% of MobilityNigeria’s traffic in June 2010 was from mobile devices
• 308 devices on 327 networks from 98 countries around the world
• 43.2% of devices are wi-fi enabled
• 8.9% – Wi-fi usage
• 23.0% – QWERTY devices
• 23.1% – touchscreen devices
• 24.9% – smartphones

Top 5 Brands

1. 58.9% – Nokia phones
2. 6.4% – Sony Ericsson
3. 6.4% – Apple
4. 5.9% – Blackberry
5. 4.4 – Samsung

Top 5 Phones

1. Nokia 5800 – 7.1%
2. Nokia E63 – 4.8%
3. Nokia 3110 Classic – 4.2%
4. Nokia N900 – 3.5%
5. Nokia 5320 – 3.3%

Operating Systems [NEW]
This is a new section and we are convinced that many readers will be interested in fuller details. As such, we are going beyond the top 5 spots so that you can all see where your favourite OS lies.

From subsequent reports, we will stick with the standard Top 5 slots. For now, enjoy the full list!

1. Symbian – 27.8%
2. Series 40 – 21.3%
3. iOS – 6.4%
4. BlackBerry – 5.9%
5. Maemo – 3.5%
6. Windows Mobile – 2.8%
7. Android – 0.7%
8. Bada – 0.2%
9. Palm – <0.1%
10. WebOS – <0.1%
11. Unknown/Unidentifiable – 31.1%

Top 5 Networks
A total of 327 networks are used to access MobilityNigeria.com

1. 25.4% – Etisalat Nigeria
2. 15.7% – Zain Nigeria
3. 11.6% – MTN Nigeria
4. 4.5% – GloMobile Nigeria
5. 2.2% – Airtel India

Top 5 Countries

1. Nigeria – 58.1%
2. India – 7.1%
3. USA – 6.2%
4. UK – 2.2%
5. Canada – 1.4%

A few things to chew on:
- mobile web traffic on the site dropped a bit from the previous month’s figures
- Apple is back in the top brands chart. Samsung makes a debut.
- The UK is back in the top countries chart
- Nokia still rules the top phones chart 100% but with a new champion taking a chunky 7.1% of mobile traffic- the 5800. The ex-champion, the Nokia 3110 Classic, is now in 3rd place.

Don’t forget, this is all MobilityNigeria.com traffic only, but then these statistics may present some fair indicators about mobile web traffic in Nigeria in general.

For the first time in many months, Nigeria fell off Opera Mini’s top 10 countries list, while Vietnam made its debut.

Here are other statistics from the report:

• Nokia and Sony Ericsson are by far the most popular handset brands chosen by Opera Mini users in the CIS
• Users in the top 10 countries save up to 672 million USD per month, or over 8.1 billion USD per year

Behind the Scene

Apparently, part of the phenomenal growth of mobile internet usage in Nigeria stemmed from the widespread practice of illegal free browsing, as subscribers generally by-passed network tolls (usually by tweaking certain settings in Opera Mini itself, alongsideother applications on PC).

Of recent, it has been reported that both MTN Nigeria and Zain Nigeria took steps to curb this practice, blocking off access to Opera Mini’s servers, and thus resulting in the recorded drop in usage. If the networks are able to keep hackers off their mobile internet services, we can expect to see Nigeria drop further on the Opera Mini chart.

Those rooting for illegal free browsing because of supposed high mobile internet tariffs need to explore legal options. For example, the very same Opera Mini that the hackers use to bypass network tolls deliver incredible savings on browsing because of its compression technology.

Personally, I have used Opera Mini extensively and even with my heavy usage, a 100mb bundle subscription (costing just N1, 000 per month) is more than adequate when used on Opera Mini. Even pay-as-you-go internet is made much more economical.

This is an application that already helps the subscriber cut costs by as much as 90% (that’s almost free browsing, if you really, really think of it).

Is it too much to let the network operators make that small margin just so they can keep access to the Opera Mini servers alive? In my opinion, this free browsing craze is not the product of poverty, but of gross selfishness, self-centredness and of corrupt minds.

But what do we care?

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Opera’s State of the Mobile Web presents the statistics for mobile web usage from January 2008 to January 2009 – and the fastest growing mobile web countries are Armenia (with over 2800% growth), followed by Nigeria (with 1854% growth).

According to the report, which is based on usage of the extremely popular Opera Mini browser for mobile phones, other notable countries include: Egypt (1391%), Philippines (570%) and Kazakhstan (419%).

Nigeria is still not in the top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage (ranked by # of unique users). Here’s that list:

1. Russia
2. Indonesia
3. Ukraine
4. China
5. India
6. South Africa
7. United States
8. United Kingdom
9. Poland
10. Germany

But at the current growth rate that Nigeria is pushing, it shouldn’t be long before the West African country shows up on the Top 10 list – and probably climb all the way to the top. Nigeria is currently number 12 on the Top 35 countries (unique users) list.

With a huge chunk of the country’s geographical mass now being covered by fast-growing GSM networks, internet access has reached many hitherto unreachable places for the first time in Nigeria.

And with more people owning and/or having access to mobile phones than PCs, the mobile internet is set to be the next big thing in the country. Nigeria has a population of over 150 million people, most of whom have no access yet to the internet.

The full report is available at: Opera: State of the Mobile Web report.