Opera wants to extend its digital presence beyond simple web browsing, and signed agreements with important electronics brands such as Samsung, Xiaomi and others to make that happen.
One way that the browsing company aims to expand is by implementing Opera Max, the its web data management app, on a broad range of smartphones. Opera's target is to have 100 million smartphones embedded with the data-compression technology by 2017.
As other big names in the industry, Opera also courts those electronics manufacturers that are up-and-coming in the mobile market. Such names are Hisense and Acer, both of which signed a partnership for having Opera Max pre-installed on their future handsets.
Opera Max operates as a proxy server, meaning that it intercepts your mobile traffic (encrypted connections excluded) and filters it through Opera's servers, which tweak the traffic in such a way that your band usage is optimized. It compresses videos or images and orders the basic HTML and CSS so that your mobile data is well spent.
The final purpose of the app is to reduce the data consumption by as much as 50 percent in most apps, while users who enjoy mobile video streaming content from Netflix or YouTube can see a decrease of 60 percent without visibly compromising the quality.
According to Sergey Lossev, Opera Max product manager, many consumers are reluctant when it comes to using their mobile data because they fear they will exceed their data caps. Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) want to ease such concerns.
"We see OEMs responding to this and stepping up to lower the barrier to mobile internet access by providing a data-optimization solution on their devices," explains Lossev.
The data-friendly Opera Max will be of great help for developing markets in Africa Asia and Latin America. The reason for this is that the affordable sub-$100 Chinese handsets are very popular in those areas, and this puts a lot of pressure on the frail mobile infrastructure. With the assistance of Opera Max, users in developing countries can get a better, faster browsing experience.
From the big names that signed with Opera, Samsung stands out as it already launched mobile devices in India sporting the compression app. Xiaomi will first test the software on its own MIUI7 OS, before the release of its smartphone line in Africa.
