Opera Software, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers, announced today that it has partnered with Korean smartphone giant Samsung to preload the software on a number of its non-smartphones in order to receive a significant usage boost of its Opera Mini browser – the Opera Mini will be available on Star3, Star 3 Duos, Champ Deluxe and Champ Deluxe Duos range, with likely to see more addition in devices throughout the year.
“These days, the difference between feature phones and smartphones has decreased. No matter the hardware specification or the user experience, feature phones are matching what the smartphone can offer,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “Samsung bridges the gap between smartphones and feature phones by choosing to preinstall Opera Mini on its new feature phones so that people can enjoy a fast and affordable web.”
The move will result in increase in speed as with this the webpages are compressed before being sent to the phone, resulting in page loading that’s up to 10 times faster and consumes up to 90% less data. Opera mini accounts for a total of more than 160 million monthly unique users – the company in January 2012 last month generated over 1,832 million MB of data for worldwide. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 12.24 petabytes of data, which is equivalent to approximately 200 years of continuously running HD-quality video.
(Image Source: Opera)
