Opera Mini, the free downloadable mobile phone web browser that makes surfing the mobile web light and fast by reducing image files sizes, continues to enjoy growth in South Africa. Remember that in Africa users pay for MB of data so every byte counts. Fewer bytes means a cheaper browsing experience — hence the popularity of Opera Mini on the continent.

Here is the latest snapshot of usage for February 2011 (taken from State of the Mobile Web).

• Page-view growth since February 2010: 118.3 %
• Unique-user growth since February 2010: 61.2 %
• Data transfer growth since February 2010: 107.8 %
• Page views per user: 431
• Data transferred per user (MB): 5
• Data transferred per page view (KB): 11
• Answers.com is back on the list after a 10-month absence.

Top 10 sites in South Africa (unique users)

• facebook.com
• google.com
• wikipedia.org (4)
• youtube.com (5)
• dictionary.com (new)
• zamob.com
• my.opera.com
• yahoo.com (9)
• answers.com (back on the list)
• twitter.com

Top handsets for February 2011

• Nokia 5130 XpressMusic
• Nokia 2700c
• Nokia 2330c
• Samsung GT-S5233a
• Nokia 2690
• Samsung SGH-E250
• Samsung SGH-E250i
• Nokia 7100s
• Nokia 5000d
• Nokia 2710c