We all know Opera as the best alternative web browser, but now they have been to a lot more. Last week on 8th May 2013, Opera had announced its partnership with seven Indian mobile OEMs to preinstall the Opera Mini mobile web browser on all the manufacturers’ upcoming handsets, phablets and tablets running on the Android mobile operating system. Celkon, Karbonn, Lava, Intex, Fly, Zen, and HCL ME tablets will have Opera Mini as the exclusive third-party browser pre-installed with the new handset.
What is Opera up to?
Opera group founded in Norway in 1994 and since then the have been constantly innovating. Some of the facts which most of us might now know is that they were the first ones to develop a web browser in 1995 before any other browser that is out there on market today. They have desktop as well as mobile web browsers with more than 300 million monthly users which is a pretty big number. Adding to this they have a mobile app store which runs directly on web browser which is ranked to number 5. In addition to computers and mobile devices, Opera also connects 20 million smart TVs, set-top boxes, media players and game consoles to the internet being the favorite bundled web browser by the manufacturers.
Why Opera has a take in India?
Opera web browsers run on data compression algorithms which uses almost 90% less bandwidth than other browsers saving 11,207,180,228 MB in a month. Unlike the United states or any other country with awesome data connectivity, India still being ruled by featured phones or budget smartphones. Recent trends by the Opera’s state of web reports tell that India is a home for Opera Mini users across the globe. During last year, Opera Mini users on smartphones in India increased by 136.6% constituting 19% of the total number which comprises of 62% growth of users on Android.
Opera has two different web browsers currently in action – Opera Mini and Opera Mobile. Opera Mini is the traditional flash web browser across all devices with data compression algorithms where Opera Mobile is a complete mobile web browser. We will be doing an ‘Install or Not’ editorial on both of them soon. We recently found a new Opera in works on the Google Play Store which is under public beta release. This new web browser is completely being rebuild using the webkit engine. It is named as Opera Beta on the Play Store and is only available for Android as of now. Go download, report bugs and help Opera build this new version.
