The new Icelandic data center one of six such server parks located world wide, so management of machines and software can now be centralised for easier access to maintenance. Opera chose Dell to deliver the hardware solutions for every data center it operates in Norway, Poland, Korea, China and the United States. Standardising on one hardware supplier, Opera expects to save on human resources and utility expenses. (Right: Jon von Tetzchner,
co-founder, Opera Software)

Global trends
Around the world, 8 p.m. to midnight are the day's prime mobile browsing hours, according to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report  Regardless of  economy, culture or location differences, those four evening hours account for a disproportionate amount of mobile data consumption.

In May 2010, Opera Mini had over 61.4m users, a 4.2% increase from April 2010. Since May 2009, number of unique users has increased 142.0%. Users viewed over 28.3bn pages in May 2010, page views up 7.7% since April and since May 2009, page views increased 193.8%.

In May 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 433m MB of data for operators worldwide. Since April, the data consumed went up by 8.8%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. Since May 2009, data traffic is up 171.8%. The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage in May 2010 were: Indonesia, Russia, India, China, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Africa, the United States, Vietnam and the United Kingdom.

Users in the US are more likely to be browsing with Opera Mini between midnight and 4 a.m. In the United Kingdom users are more likely to be browsing with Opera Mini between 4 a.m. and noon, where in in India users are more likely to be browsing with between noon and 4 p.m.

In the Ukraine and South Africa best browsing time with is between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m, where Nigeria and Vietnam are more likely to be browsing between 8 p.m. and midnight. The difference in usage during peak hours versus off-peak hours varies in each country. The biggest difference is noticeable in Vietnam (27% between 8 p.m. and midnight versus 9% between midnight and 4 a.m.).

Latin America trends
Top 10 countries using Opera Mini in the region are Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Honduras. From May 2009 to May 2010, page views in that top 10 countries increased by 214%, unique users increased by 195%, and the amount of data transferred increased by 234%

Peru and Ecuador lead the region in terms of page-view growth (1,213.3% and 515.4%, respectively). Colombia and Brazil lead growth of unique users (322.4% and 303.6%, respectively). Costa Rica leads  in page views per user, with each user browsing 426 pages average each month.

Google, Facebook, Live and YouTube all do well in Latin America. Google is the top ranked site in all ten of the listed countries, Facebook  ranked #2 in 8 out of the 10 countries. Orkut remains strong in Brazil. Smaller social-networking sites, such as hi5, are popular in several countries on the list.

Hotmail, which was popular the last time we looked at this region, was noticeably absent from the top 10 lists in this month's report. Auction site MercadoLibre, eBay’s Latin American partner, is popular in 8 of the top 10 countries.

Opera Mini users in Latin America typically prefer Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets. However, Apple-iPhone-using Opera Mini users have made an impact in the region. The iPhone shows up in all ten of the top 10 Latin America handset lists , and is among top 5 handsets in 9 out of the 10 Latin American countries listed in this report.