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Sagar Chandna, Country Manager, India.

Photo: Kari Vartdal Riise

An article published on Dagens IT is about how India, with its 10 million new mobile phone subscribers during March, is developing into a larger target market for Opera with our mobile Web browser, Opera Mini. Mobile phones in India is experiencing an explosive growth and it's no longer reserved for those with the necessary recourses, but for everyone (and with 1,2 billion people we are talking about a few consumers).

Out of estimated 80 million Internet users, roughly 50% use Internet cafe's as their online portal, but this is due to the fact that India has not established a wide spread infrastructure, yet. If the 40 million that doesn't have Internet at home begin using the mobile phone as an access point to the Web, well, you can only imagine what kind of potential market this is for Opera.

We established our office in India (blog) more than a year ago, so we're situated right in the heat. Opera's CEO, Jon S. von Tetzchner, had this to say: "The question was not if we should establish an office in India, but when. The country is an oasis for a company like Opera Software."

Watch the video about Opera featuring our very own Sagar Chandna.

Read the full article at Dagens IT (Norwegian only).

Picture series is also available.

Kudos to Aleksander for the summary.

Read the full "State of the Mobile Web" report.

Help us digg it!

Traffic to social networks comprise almost 40% of the mobile Web according to our "State of the Mobile Web" report, published today. The results both show healthy growth in the numbers of consumers accessing the Web from their mobile devices and provide insight into aggregate consumer preferences when browsing from their phones.

Social networking consumes almost 41% of traffic: The United States, South Africa and Indonesia have more than 60% of their traffic going to social networks. More than 11.9 million people used Opera Mini in March to browse 2.4 billion pages. Thus far, more than 44 million cumulative users have tried Opera Mini. Those 11.9 million people generate more than 33 million MB of data traffic for operators worldwide. One Web will triumph over WAP content: Full Web surfing comprises more than 77% of all traffic. WAP content still generates the remaining 23% of traffic. WAP percentages have declined somewhat as more consumers realize Opera Mini can access rich Web content.

As the world's most popular Web browser for mobile phones, Opera Mini provides an elegant, fast and rich Web browsing experience. While some Web browsers work on only 20 to 30 phone models, Opera Mini runs on more than 700 different handsets, making it the available to the widest range of consumers worldwide. Almost every phone with Java can run Opera Mini.

Data in the report is based on aggregate and anonymous statistics from Opera Mini servers. All percentages are based on a snapshot of the Top 100 sites for each region.

Opera Mini is now in its 4th version, and to celebrate an upcoming release, we want to create a collage featuring people using Opera Mini from around the world.

Therefore, we're reaching out to you. We would like to tribute you on our product pages (among other places) with a picture (head shot) and a testimonial (1-2 sentences) about why you love Opera Mini.

It's recommended that you submit a picture of yourself which is in good quality (high resolution and minimal amount of noise). Feel free to snap a picture of yourself doing something fun while surfing the Web on your phone, or something similar. All you need is a camera and a good chunk of imagination. Just be sure to have your face fairly prominent in the picture.

The reward for those who're used in the collage will receive an Opera goodie-bag and instant Internet fame by being recognized with our smallest (but most powerful) browser .

Good luck everyone, and we can't wait to see those testimonials!

Rules

• Deadline is on Monday, May 12th.
• Images are limited to .jpg, .gif, .png and .pdf. If you would like to use a different format, please send an inquiry first.
• Email attachments are limited to 1 MB. Please send an inquiry if your submission is greater than 1 MB size, or if you have a location to host your file (such as your My Opera Community account), simply send the link.
• It is prohibited to send content which is defamatory, offensive or abusive or of an obscene or menacing nature.
• Send your entry as an attachment or upload it to your My Opera Community page, and email the link.
• By sending us your submission, you accept that Opera Software ASA may re-use your submission for marketing purposes.

If you are a Russian Opera Mini user, have tried the new beta of Opera Mini 4, and would like to tell the world how awesome it is (and hopefully you feel that way), just drop me a private message. We are planning a big event in Moscow next week and would like some user testimonials to accompany our efforts.

No, it won't look anything like the Rock Opera event, but we've got something special planned, or rather the first of several special somethings. We have tens of millions of people using Opera throughout the country and we feel it's time to show how much we appreciate that support.