Jan 20, 2011 18:51 GMT  ·  By

Opera Mini has been long said to be the most popular mobile browser around the world, and the fact that it enjoyed a number of over 85.5 million users in December 2010 is proof of that. According to the latest State of the Mobile Web Report from Opera, the mobile browser enjoyed a 6.8 percent increase when compared to November 2010, while going up by 84.7 percent in terms of unique users when compared to December 2009.

The said reports also shows that Opera Mini users viewed a number of other 46.7 billion pages during the month of December 2010, marking an increase of 4.6 percent in page views.

When compared to December 2009, the number of page views went up by 125.5 percent. If it wasn't for the compression technology that Opera Mini comes with, users would have viewed 6.5 petabytes of data.

At the same time, the report shows that more and more mobile phone users are accessing Amazon.com from their devices.

Opera Mini users in the United States and Germany are those who accessed Amazon.com the most, Opera's report shows. They almost doubled the number of page views to Amazon.com towards the end of the year, when compared to earlier in 2011.

The traditional shopping frenzy also resulted in an increase in shopping from mobile phones, the said report continues.

“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',” Opera notes.

The increase is significant when it comes to both monthly and daily numbers. Moreover, it shows that more and more users are interested in shopping and browsing online stores while 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.”