The Philippines is the most active country on social media, according to the latest State of the Mobile Web report released by Opera Software. Mobile internet users in the Philippines tend to visit social-networking sites more than any other. In total, 86% of the page views from Opera Mini mobile browser users in the Philippines are to social-network sites – the highest percentage among Opera Mini’s top-50 user countries, worldwide.
The State of the Mobile Web report is based on aggregated information obtained from Opera Mini servers. The servers compress webpages and reduce them to as little as 10% of their original size before sending them to an Opera Mini user’s device. In June 2015, Opera Mini’s servers processed 24 575 TB of data and served over 160-billion pages. More than 250-million people around the world use Opera Mini for a faster web experience and to get the most out of their mobile data usage.
The Philippines has the eighth-largest Opera Mini user base in the world and the second-largest in Southeast Asia. The user base increased by 41% over the past year, while its smartphone user base surged by 90%. The report released today provides a definitive analysis of the key trends affecting the mobile web in Philippines. Here are some highlights:
Mobile web usage is growing in the 
The number of page views increased by 62% over the year. Each Opera Mini user browses 638 webpages on average per month. This is higher than the average for overall Opera Mini users, which is 615 pages.
It is all about social
Mobile internet users in the Philippines have highest social-media activity in the world. In all, 86% of page views by Opera Mini users in the Philippines are on social-networking sites, the highest percentage among the top-50 Opera Mini user countries. Facebook clearly dominates. Twitter, WordPress, tumblr, Pinterest, and Flirchi also in the list of top-20 most visited sites.
Smartphone and local phone brands are becoming mainstream
More than half of Filipinos who browse with Opera Mini users do so on smartphones. The smartphone adoption rate has grown from 41% in June 2014 to 55% in June 2015. Local smartphone brands are catching up and gaining more market share. A breakdown of the top 100 mobile devices preferred by Opera Mini users shows that Cherry Mobile has overtaken Samsung, with a 27% market share. Another local brand, MyPhone, has 8%. The total market share of these two local smartphone brands is 35%, higher than Nokia’s 31%.
“The prevalence of the smartphone is driving internet usage in the Philippines,” says Eiko H. Raquel, Country Manager for the Philippines at Opera Software. “Filipinos love to share things with friends and families. This country used to be the text-messaging capital of the world. Now, with easier internet access and higher smartphone adoption, the Philippines has not only been crowned the ‘selfie capital of the world’ by Time magazine, but also has now been ranked as ‘the most social nation’ by Opera.”
This article is published in collaboration with Mail & Guardian. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum.
Author: Arthur Goldstuck writes for Mail & Guardian.
Image: Silhouettes of men holding phones in front of the Twitter symbol. REUTERS.