More Other Countries IP Communications Stories

As communications services improve around the world, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of mobile web applications. Last month, Opera released a State of the Mobile Web report, detailing the boom in the Asia Pacific region. This month, they have shifted their focus to Latin America, exploring the mobile usage habits of Latin American users in depth.

The usage of Opera Mini has grown most significantly in Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti. Since the last time that Opera examined the mobile habits of their Latin American users, Nokia (News - Alert) has lost its stronghold and is sharing the market with Blackberry, which is one of the most popular mobile brands internationally, and Samsung.

In all Latin American countries, Google, Facebook (News - Alert), and YouTube make the top ten most frequently used sites. Besides what Opera rightfully calls the “big three” sites, the top 10 most frequently used sites in each country include local sites and local news sites. 

Opera’s full State of the Mobile Web report allows viewers to explore mobile trends by country, making it easy to compare and contrast the state of the mobile web: Peru has a 162 percent user growth, a 131 percent page view growth, and a 163 percent data usage growth. Their top ten domains are: Facebook, Google, YouTube, BlogSpot, Wikipedia, Live.com, Yahoo, eBuddy.com, Softonic.com, and Twitter (News - Alert). Their top 10 handsets include Alcatel, Nokia, SonyEricsson, Samsung, and Blackberry. Argentina’s top ten domains are similar to those of Peru; however, their handset market is still largely dominated by Nokia and their user growth is significantly less than that of Peru with a 95 percent increase.

Although Latin American countries may have a long way to go before their mobile usage matches that of the United States, they are quickly closing the technology gap that has long existed between the two. While their handsets of choice may vary, largely based on accessibility of the devices, their choices in webpages are very similar to those of American mobile web users.

Want to learn more about the growing communications opportunities in Latin America? Don’t miss LatinComm Conference & Expo, collocated with ITEXPO Austin 2012 happening now in Austin, TX.  Stay in touch with everything happening at LatinComm. Follow us on Twitter.