... And almost 80-90% of them use Opera mini.<p>I run a Nigerian news site here but most of our traffic is from Nigeria, we get about 1500 uniques a day, only 200-300 of them will be from the web, all the rest is mobile. I finally went and pulled up our site on opera mini using Opera's emulator and was shocked to find that our ads do not appear on those handsets ... so all our revenue is coming from 200-300 people each day.<p>Analytics is a lovely thing.
The situation in Nigeria is unique. Because of the power situation (mobile phones have longer lasting battery), the very poor infracstructure (wired last mile is non existent), and of course pricing ($40/month is the minimum package on WiMax vs $7 on mobile). Non-mobile browsing stands no chance.<p>Just a thought: Are tablets considered mobile in this context? Because that is where I see major growth potential)
The vital question: Is mobile traffic going to (proportionally) increase in the UK, or is desktop traffic going to increase in Nigeria?<p>Are people using mobile in Nigeria because they don't have a laptop? Will they be using their Raspberry Pi in a couple of years? Or is the UK behind in the adoption of using mobile internet? I guess it's a bit of both.
It's amazing to see how developing countries simply jumped to wireless technologies without having the need to build expensive cable based phone networks like what developed countries had to go through. I read a story of a farmer in China who sells his crops to a shady middleman who lies to him about the market price of grain. Finally when he got a cellphone and was able to subscribe to a messaging service that gives him live updates on prices he was able to negotiate better and improve his standard of living. This is truly empowering.
On a similar note, Cisco predicts that "in 2015, wired devices will account for 46 percent of IP traffic, while Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 54 percent of IP traffic [globally]."<p>For more stats and figures from their Networking Index Forecast, check out <a href="http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/...</a>
For India: <a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-IN-monthly-201101-201201" rel="nofollow">http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-IN-monthly-2011...</a>
I've read that in some countries, a single person with a cell phone can act as a money transfer office for an entire village. Here's how:<p>1. A friend or family member in the U.S. wants to send $50 to someone in the village. The friend buys a $50 prepaid minutes card and transfers the minutes to the cell phone in the village.<p>2. The cell phone owner in the village checks his minutes, sees that he now has $50 worth of minutes and gives $50 to the person the minutes were for, minus his fee.<p>It's amazing how ingenious people can be when you let them.