Opera, the developer of the popular Opera Mini browser for mobile users, released its State of the Mobile Web report for the first quarter of 2008 this week. The verdict: the mobile web is dead.

Among the key stats in the report are that 77% of web surfing on mobile devices lead to full websites as opposed to only 23% going to mobile or WAP sites, and social networking dominates mobile web browsing with 63% of the traffic in the United States going to social networks.

The introduction of mobile browsers capable of displaying rich content such as the Opera Mini browser, the iPhone's Safari browser, and the upcoming Skyfire browser is killing off any thought of a separate web for mobile users and should put more pressure on social websites to implement Mobile 2.0 features such as becoming GPS-aware.

While it is important to note that the numbers produced in the report are inflated because they are taken from Opera Mini users -- mobile websites would certainly be a more popular destination on browsers incapable of displaying rich content -- the trend towards mobile access to full websites is clear.

Among the most popular web destinations for mobile users in the U.S. are MySpace, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. Among websites in the top ten, only MocoSpace and Itsmy are intended for mobile users being the primary audience.

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