Amazon now one of 10 most-visited mobile sites in U.S.

In the wake of a Black Friday shopping frenzy that saw mobile payments processed via PayPal up nearly 650 percent over the previous year and mobile page views for U.S. retailers increasing an average of 388 percent, Opera Software reports online retailer Amazon.com now ranks in the top 10 most-visited mobile sites in the U.S. in terms of unique visitors. "Are more Americans starting to do their holiday shopping both online and on-the-go, or are they comparing prices between online and brick-and-mortar retailers?" Opera asks in its November 2009 State of the Mobile Web Report, which notes Google remains the most visited mobile website in the U.S. market, followed in descending order by Facebook, Yahoo, MySpace and Wikipedia. Opera Mini browser pageviews per user in the U.S. now average 266, up 232.6 percent year-over-year.

In all, Opera Mini users worldwide topped 41.7 million users last month, a 5.3 increase from Oct. 2009 and more than 154 percent over Nov. 2008 totals. Opera Mini pageviews exceeded 18.8 billion pages for the month, up 9.5 percent month-over-month and a 231 percent annual increase.

Opera Mini's growth is tied to surging mobile web activity across Africa--in the top 10 African markets, pageviews increased by 374 percent, unique users grew by 177 percent and data transferred increased by 183 percent over the past year. Mobile social networking is surging across the continent: Facebook is now the most popular site visited by Opera Mini users in six out of 10 countries and the number two site in three of the countries where it is not number one.

For more on Opera's latest State of the Mobile Web report:
- read this release

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