Opera has provided an useful benchmark on popular mobile destinations in Malaysia as well as other selected countries, via the State of the Mobile Web, May 2009 report. Malaysia enjoys a growth rate (as in unique users) of 249.6% since May 2008, third highest in Southeast Asia after Vietnam and Philippines.

Top sites ranked by unique users
1. google.com
2. friendster.com
3. facebook.com
4. yahoo.com
5. myspace.com
6. youtube.com
7. my.opera.com
8. wikipedia.org
9. tagged.com
10. gamejump.com

Comparing to the report in Oct 2008, tagged.com is a new entry in this recent report while the sole local site utusan.com.my has dropped out from the top 10 list. If you look into Southeast Asia region, Malaysia is the only country without a local site in the top tens among countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Singapore and even Brunei.

Have you been wondering what are the most used browsers (on web and mobile) in Malaysia? StatCounter does provide an useful reference to this with its sampling method as the following:

Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites.

After months of rumours, iPhone 3G is now officially available in Malaysia with Maxis, well at least according to its corporate site hours ago.

The details are no longer accessible now, but you can still check the snapshotted rate plans here.

UPDATE: It seems to be back up, and Maxis has astonishingly made some adjustment to the earlier release.

12 months contract: iPhone 3G price from RM 1,080 to RM 2,290

Sad to say, car stolen cases are very common in Malaysia. As reported by Sin Chew Daily, Mr Yap in Johor Bahru has managed to recover his stolen Toyota Camry all by himself (it's pretty hopeless if you are to rely on police). Guess how he did it?



Yes, Mr Yap has a habit of hiding a mobile phone in his car, of which granted permission for Friend Finder service. The police officer did not believe him after being told the approximate location of his stolen vehicle. He then spent more than 3 hours searching for his car at the surrounding area signaled by Friend Finder, and finally recovered it.

Yes, you heard it right, sort of. Maxis is now offering free mobile internet, but it's only 1 month free trial for "selected customers only". The free trial is also only limited to the 1MB package, which they are currently charging RM5 monthly.



Personally, I am not getting too excited by this offering. I was, and still looking forward to really attractive flat rate data plans. Be it from any telco, I don't mind doing a party-hopping without millions on the table, oops I mean MNP.

Yes, according to State of the Mobile Web, Oct 2008 report by Opera, Malaysia has the highest mobile internet user growth in Southeast Asia. Although the usage is measured solely on Opera Mini, it is still an useful benchmark on mobile internet adoption and trend in this region.



Opera Mini has only 0.06% market share compared to both desktop and mobile browsers, but nevertheless it has big market share in mobile browsers. This is because it is being shipped on major mobile manufacturers and available to various mobile operating system (excluding iPhone OS), making it the alternative browser of choice for mobile users.

Japan



While Mixi is the leader in PC SNS, Mobage Town is Japan's no.1 Mobile SNS. Mobage Town is a huge success in mobile-oriented Japan which enables community-driven activities via mobile. Their "killer-app" is the wide range of free games which build up the initial user base.

Rolled out in February 2006, around 9 (or 11) million subscribers.