Opera?s November State of the Mobile Web report reflects on a year of growth for the mobile Internet, with users browsing an incredible 340 billion pages in the first 11 months of 2010.

In the first 11 months of 2009, Opera users browsed 129 billion pages. With more than 80 million users in November, the yearly trends reflect a user base spanning teenagers with smartphones in Western Europe to users of basic feature phones in developing countries.

?We look beyond borders, and beyond issues of economic development, to present the most rounded picture of the mobile Web available today,? said Jon von Tetzchner, cofounder of Opera Software. ? Our statistics show that while some popular websites such as Facebook are staples of the mobile Web, there are significant movements bubbling just below the top sites.

?Twitter and Zedge are just two of the sites that rose significantly on a global basis, while waptrick and Friendster became less popular as the year progressed,? he said. ?We believe people with access to information lead more social, more informed and more empowered lives.

?Growth in mobile browsing means the Web is pushing beyond its traditional borders.?

Key findings
Opera Mini saw significant increases in all three categories of growth in November 2010: unique users, pages viewed and data consumed.

In all, 80.0 million people used Opera Mini in November, 44.6 billion pages were served, and 6.3 petabytes of operator data were compressed for Opera Mini users.

Nigeria passed the United States in terms of total Opera Mini users in the month of November.

Britain, Belarus, Philippines, Poland, Bangladesh and Germany all went up in the ranking of top 20 countries. Turkey was a new addition in November, as Malaysia fell off the list.

From November 2009 to November 2010, page views in the top 11 countries of Latin America increased by 543percent, unique users increased by 298 percent and data transferred increased by 447 percent.

Growth rates in Latin America
Brazil and Ecuador lead the top 11 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (1535.9 % percent and 860.4 percent, respectively).

Brazil and Colombia lead the top 11 countries of the region in growth of unique users (575.6  percent and 333.7 percent, respectively).

Brazil and Dominican Republic lead the top 11 countries of the region in growth of data transferred (1181.5 percent and 599.7 percent, respectively).

Costa Rica leads the top 11 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 694 pages on average each month.

In the top Latin American countries ? except for Brazil ? Google, Facebook, Live, and YouTube variously occupy positions one through four in the site rankings for each country.

In Brazil, Orkut replaces Facebook, but Facebook is still in Brazil?s top 10 list of sites.

?If the first era of the Web was about expanding the capability and content of the Web, the second age is clearly about access,? Mr. Tetzchner said. ?Every page view and every new user represents an opportunity to expand the reach of the Web. We believe that is something to celebrate ? not only during the holidays, but every day ? for we truly live in a remarkable age.

?In our regional spotlight, the focus is on Latin America, where we saw tremendous growth over the last year,? he said. ?In Brazil and Ecuador, for example, the number of people using Opera Mini increased significantly, setting the pace in a region where mobile Web use is evolving rapidly.?