• In data released by Opera, 8.5 per cent of the company’s 100 million African users are in Kenya.
• Nigeria has recorded the highest numbers accounting for 25 per cent of users.
• Opera Mini says that African data usage on its browser has expanded 171 per cent between 2013 and 2016.

Kenyans are among the highest users of the mobile phone browser Opera Mini in a trend that is driven by increased use of smartphones in the country.

In data released by Opera, 8.5 per cent of the company’s 100 million African users are in Kenya.

Nigeria has recorded the highest numbers accounting for 25 per cent of users.

Opera Mini says that African data usage on its browser has expanded 171 per cent between 2013 and 2016.

Nevertheless, customers face prohibitively high. 53 per cent of all Africans can only afford 20MB of data per month.

“Whilst someone in Germany on an ‘average’ salary can afford 500MB after working for just one hour, a Nigerian will have to work around three and a half days to afford the same,” reads the report.

Costs are further exacerbated by background operations which eat up the data of unwitting smartphone users.

‘Wasted’ data

Opera has found that 30 per cent of all mobile data is “wasted” in these background operations.

These operations may include email syncing or news article updates.

Android phones have particularly driven growth in the usage of mobile data, making up 50 per cent of Opera Mini users in Kenya.
In addition to more sophisticated phones, the company also reckons that the availability of richer web content is driving the growth in data usage.

Africa is a mobile-data heavy market making it an ideal target market for the Opera Mini product. In Kenya, for instance, 99 per cent of all Internet browsers are using mobile devices.

Opera’s competitive edge is lost on other devices such as desktop computers where the market is cornered by browsers such as Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

mumumo@ke.nationmedia.com

Daily Nation