Barely five days since the launch of Opera 9.5, the new release has already seen 4.7 million downloads. On average, that’s nearly a million downloads each day.

New usage figures are out as well, and they look just as good, with more than 20 million users running the desktop browser, and 12 million running Opera Mini. That’s twice the number of users they had when Opera 9.0 appeared two years ago.

To put these numbers in perspective:

• Nearly one-fourth of Opera users downloaded the new release within the first five days.
• Opera Mini has more than half as many users as Opera Desktop.
• More people use Opera Desktop each month than live in the state of New York (2006 population estimate).
• More people use Opera Mini each month than live in Greece (2002 population estimates).

The year of 2007 was a strong and positive one for the Opera desktop browser. At year’s end, there were more than 20 million monthly users of Opera on the desktop, a 55% increase from 2006.

The growth shows that there’s certainly an interest in alternative browsers, other than Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox.

Opera Link, currently available in Opera Mini 4 and the beta version of Opera 9.5, will give additional exposure to the Opera desktop browser. And I believe the popularity of Opera Mini is also giving the desktop browser a boost.

Photo credit: Oleg Melnychuck

So how popular is Opera Mini? Do people really browse the Web on their mobile phones?

1.7 billion webpages
Well, last month alone Opera Mini users browsed a staggering 1.7 billion webpages. Rest assured, the mobile Web is alive and kicking.

How many Opera Mini servers are required to process these 1.7 billion pages? That’s some serious cloud computing there.

100,000 downloads each day
The number of Opera Mini users keeps on climbing. Every day, more than 100,000 people download Opera Mini onto their phones.

Opera Mini, the little browser that could.

Following up on the increase in Opera Mini’s popularity (now at 0.66% of the entire browser market share). Here’s a graph showing the number of monthly webpages Opera Mini users have viewed.

Since the launch of Opera Mini in 2006, over 11 billion webpages were browsed on this little browser by our users.

The Opera Mini browser works with a server on the back-end, which pre-processes, compresses, and formats the webpage to fit the screens size of the phone.

(Opera Mini monthly page views)

We’ve been seeing a huge increase in our internal usage numbers of the Opera desktop browser. Internal usage statistics show that the Opera desktop browser grew its number of users by about 45% in the last 10 months.

I closely monitor the internal usage numbers on a weekly basis; it has been going up and up. We currently have a record high number of users.

Our goal for the year of 2007 was to grow our number of users by 50%. With the 45% increase, we’re very close to reaching our goal. We’ve got one more month to go; hopefully we’ll surpass our goal for the year.

According to statistics released by NetApplications, Opera grew its browser market share to 1.11% in the month of November, up from 0.87% in September, a 28% increase. (See note about these statistics)

The increase in popularity of the Opera desktop browser is no doubt a result of our many fans promoting and spreading the word of Opera. It’s great that we have such a vibrant and active community of users who go out of their way to tell people about Opera (in blogs, comments, forums, etc). I always enjoy reading blog posts about Opera. Keep it up.

(Browser statistics for the month of November. Source: NetApplications)

The November stats by NetApplications show Opera Mini is more popular than the Netscape browser (see graph below).

According to these stats, Opera Mini’s market share grew significantly over the previous month. In November, Opera Mini had a market share of 0.66% (of the entire browser market share, including desktop browsers), which is up from 0.41% in the month of October.

With the increase in Opera Mini’s popularity, it jumped ahead of the once-popular Netscape browser. Netscape’s market share comes in at a 0.57%.

I should point out that these stats aren’t available publicly on NetApplication’s website; you must be logged in to see them. For those of you with a My Opera account, you already have a NetApplications/HitsLink account. Simply go to your account settings page on My Opera, and follow the link for ‘Statistics.’

(Opera Mini moving up in the charts!)

As you can see from the graph below, the interest in Opera Mini is growing. This graph shows how many times people have searched for “Opera Mini” on Google.

Nice!

The monthly browser share statistics from NetApplications are in today, and the Opera desktop browser is the big winner among the pack.

Opera’s market share increased to 0.99% in the month of October from 0.87% in the month before, a 14% increase.

Opera Mini also continued its growth in the overall browser market share, with this past month clocking in at 0.41% (of the total browser market share, including desktop browsers).

(Browser stats for the month of October - Source: NetApplications)

Opera Mini more than doubled its market share in the past 5 months, according HitsLink.

In April, Opera Mini had 0.13% of the entire browser market share. It has now grown to 0.27% in the month of August.

As you can see from the graphs below, Opera Mini is having a phenomenal growth rate – a feat, considering that it’s a mobile Web browser.

I haven’t yet seen the internal stats for the month of August; however in the month of July Opera Mini users browsed close to 1 billion pages.

(Stats for the month of August)

(July stats)

(June stats)

(May stats)

(April stats)

(Opera Mini monthly page views)

We’ve seen a continuous increase in usage of the Opera Mini browser. Last month alone (July) Opera Mini users browsed close to 1,000,000,000 (yup, 1 billion) pages.

Since January of 2006 Opera Mini users browsed more than 7.8 billion webpages (see graph below).

In addition to those using Opera Mini on phones that have had it pre-installed by handset manufactures and operators/carriers, 19.9 million users have downloaded and used Opera Mini.

According to HitsLink, Opera Mini had 0.24% of the browser market share in the month of July, an impressive stat for a mobile browser.

With the upcoming Opera Mini 4 release we expect to see a continued surge in the usage and popularity of Opera Mini.

(Opera Mini monthly page views - enlarge)

The market share for Opera Mini in the month of July continued to grow, according to HitsLink. Opera Mini now has 0.24% of the entire browser market share.

On the desktop side, Internet Explorer and Safari had slight gains their market share, while Opera and Firefox lost some.

Browser market share statistics – Source: HitsLink

According to stats released yesterday by HotLog, Opera has surpassed Firefox in the Russian market share of web browsers. Opera is now the second most popular browser in Russia behind Internet Explorer (IE).

Opera has always been very popular in Russia. Many in Russia still use Dial-up – Opera’s ability to show only cached images on a per-tab basis, no doubt helped make Opera a winner.

We obviously have to take this and all other browser statistics with a grain of salt. It’s a bit odd to me that there is no mention of IE7 in those stats.

With the recent successful Opera Mini 4 beta release, Opera Mini’s website got a huge amount of traffic — so much so, that it made it to Alexa’s list of Movers & Shakers. The Movers & Shakers list lists the top 10 websites moving up or moving down in the traffic rankings, as measured by the change in the number of users visiting the site.

According to Alexa, Opera Mini’s website traffic grew by 400% (see graph below), with close to 20% of the visitors coming from the United States (US).

Traffic to operamini.com

With an increase of more than 22% in the browser market share, the Opera desktop browser experienced the biggest gains out of all major browsers for the month of June, according to NetApplications.

Opera jumped from 0.74% in the month of May to 0.91% in June. With this increase, Opera is now more widely used than Netscape, which dropped 6% to 0.78%.

Firefox remained relatively unchanged at 14.55%, while Internet Explorer (IE) had a slight increase to 78.84%. Safari, meanwhile, lost 6% of its market share in the month of June.

And as I mentioned in my previous post, Opera Mini increased its market share by more than 30% to 0.21% of the total market share, including desktop browsers.

Winners:

1. Opera Mini: + 31.25%
2. Opera (desktop): + 22.97%
3. Internet Explorer: + 0.22%
4. Firefox: + 0.07%

Losers:

1. Safari: - 6.85%
2. Mozilla: - 6.67%
3. Netscape: - 6.02%

Thanks to all those at Choose Opera who helped spread the word.

Opera Mini continued to grow in terms of browser market share during the month of June, according to statistics released by HitsLink/NetApplications.

In the month of June Opera Mini had 0.21% of the entire browser market share (including desktop), up from 0.16% in the previous month.

This past month Opera Mini 4 beta was released with positive coverage in the blogosphere and traditional media. The New York Times, for example, had the following headline: “If You Like the Safari Browser for the iPhone, You’ll Love Opera Mini for Cellphones.” This publicity, no doubt, contributed to Opera Mini’s growth.

So, at what percentage will Opera Mini be next month? Any guesses?

Yesterday I blogged about the continued surge in popularity of Opera Mini and its penetration into the desktop browser market share. But I failed to notice the bigger story, until it was mentioned on one of the internal company mailing lists.

Opera Mini is now more used than the Mozilla browser, according to the HitsLink/NetApplications (see chart). In the month of May Opera Mini had 0.16% of the total browser market share, while Mozilla had only 0.15%.

Now granted Mozilla is not used much nowadays, it’s been taken over by Firefox. However, what was once a popular browser choice with a semi-respectable market share is now being beaten by the tiny Opera Mini mobile browser.

Having followed the developments of Opera Mini from when it was first announced this represents a monumental milestone. Especially since it has been only about 15 months since Opera Mini was launched globally.

As most of you already know, the Opera Mini team will soon be releasing a new beta of the browser. I’ve been testing it for some time already; hopefully you’ll be able to so soon too.

Get Opera Mini - it’s the best browser for your phone!