Those 50.5 million people viewed more than 22 billion pages in February 2010. Since January, page views went down 5.6 percent, partly because February only has 28 days compared to January’s 31. Since February 2009, page views have increased 200 percent.

“We like to think of Opera Mini as a win-win solution,” said Jon von Tetzchner, cofounder of Opera, Oslo, Norway. “Consumers who would otherwise not pay for the mobile Web can do so without fear of ‘sticker shock’ when they see their bill.”

In February 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 330 million MB of data for carriers worldwide. Since January, the data consumed went down by 1.9 percent, also due to the fewer number of days in February.

Data in Opera Mini is compressed by up to 90 percent. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 3 petabytes of data in February. Since February 2009, data traffic is up over 164 percent.

The top 11 countries using Opera Mini in the North American region are the United States, Mexico, Canada, Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe, Trinidad & Tobago, Panama and Puerto Rico.

From February 2009 to February 2010, page views in the top 11 countries of North America and the Caribbean increased by 153 percent, unique users increased by 109 percent and data transferred increased by 84 percent.

In North America and the Caribbean, among mobile Web users, Google is at the top of the rankings in 10 out of the top 11 countries. In Puerto Rico, Google is No. 2 (behind Facebook).

In North America and the Caribbean, Facebook is also very popular, taking the No. 1 spot in Puerto Rico, the No. 2 spot in six of the top 11 countries and the No. 3 spot in two of the top 11 countries.

Opera Mini users in North America and the Caribbean use several different handset brands, including BlackBerry, LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

In the United States and Canada, BlackBerry handsets occupy the No. 1 spot. In five out of the 11 countries, Sony Ericsson handsets are number 1. In four out of the 11 countries, Nokia handsets take the No. 1 spot.

United States snapshot
– Page-view growth since February 2009: 154.9 percent
– Unique-user growth since February 2009: 103.4 percent
– Page views per user: 278
– Data transferred per user (MB): 6
– Data transferred per page view (KB): 22
– AccuWeather.com is back on the list after a 1-month absence

Top 10 sites in the United States (unique users) 1. google.com 2. facebook.com 3. yahoo.com 4. wikipedia.org 5. myspace.com 6. youtube.com 7. my.opera.com 8. cnnmobile.com (new) 9. espn.go.com 10. accuweather.com (back on the list)

Top handsets for February 2010
1. BlackBerry 8330 (“Curve”)
2. LG LX600 (“Lotus”)
3. Samsung SPH M810 (“Instinct s30”)
4. Samsung SPH M800 (“Instinct”)
5. LG CU920 (“Vu”)
6. BlackBerry 9000 (“Bold”)
7. Nokia 5130 XpressMusic
8. BlackBerry 8900 (“Curve”)
9. BlackBerry 9530 (“Storm 2”)
10. BlackBerry 9630 (“Tour”)

“People paying for a flat-rate data plan can enjoy quick and hassle-free browsing over Edge or 3G connections,” Mr. Tetzchner said. “Operators attract new customers for their data packages, and their strained networks can catch their breath while our servers do the heavy lifting.”