Opera rebuts the view that the future of mobile browsing belongs to smartphones

Opera Software reported in its new survey that in Nigeria, South Africa and Indonesia over 90% of users aged 10 to 27 use mobile phones as their primary means to access the Internet rather than smartphones which are not very popular in emerging markets.

The results of the survey challenged the common belief that the future of mobile browsing will be driven by the smartphones use globally.

According to the research the nations with the highest percentage of respondents using desktop or laptop computers as the primary means of Internet access were countries where smartphones are more common among the top handsets used, including the U.S. and Germany, where the split between phone and laptop or desktop is about fifty-fifty.

Among the US and German Opera Mini users in October the most popular mobile device was the iPhone while in India and Nigeria it was Nokia's 5130 XpressMusic.

The fact that users in developing states select to use feature phones over smartphones is not necessary their voluntary choice, it may also be because of the lack of fixed Internet infrastructure and the fact that people can't afford the iPhone 4 or the latest high-end Android-based smartphone.