Opera staffs up and targets accelerated growth in emerging markets

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Mobile Industry & Technology Journalist - freelance

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Opera staffs up and targets accelerated growth in emerging markets

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 9 December, 2008

Despite the economic crisis, use of the mobile internet is expected to grow virtually unabated in 2009, and mobile web specialists are gearing up for expansion. One of the veterans of the field, Opera Software, is staffing up to the tune of 200 people as it pushes on two fronts - enhancing its main browser to keep ahead of a rising tide of new entrants at the high end, while extending its market reach on lower end webphones through its Mini product.

As the browser becomes a full platform for web applications and services, the technological and political battles are heating up, with Google planning Chrome, Nokia throwing resources at its own Series 60 browser, and even Microsoft trying to make Internet Explorer Mobile a serious contender at last. To add to the competition, many vendors and operators are working on browsers based on the open source WebKit platform (including Google).

All this puts new pressure on Opera, but it sees its key opportunities to maintain its mobile lead lying in three areas - the fragmentation of the open source field, which it hopes will keep Opera and Opera Mini ahead in cross-platform capabilities as well as functionality; the operators' desire to create their own customized, self-branded web experiences, which will drive them towards a cross-OS product with advanced personalization and widgets (a key R&D focus for Opera); and the expansion of the mobile web into emerging markets and lower cost devices.

In this low cost, low power sector, there are fewer competitors, so far at least, and the big names are looking for a proven software platform that they can deploy quickly and at low cost to take advantage of expansion in countries like India, where many consumers' first internet experience will be on the cellphone. So while Nokia has created its own browser for its S60 smartphones, it is using Opera's products on its lower end Series 40 software platform, which will be the heart of its major push into emerging markets for web services from 2009. Opera is present on about 60m S40 devices so far, and is now preinstalled in a way that integrates it tightly with Nokia's Ovi web services portal, increasing its strategic value. Opera Mini is also the browser for Qualcomm's recently launched Kayak platform, which is targeted at the mobile internet market in emerging economies. There are 22m active users of Opera Mini, the company's browser for low power, small screen devices, to date, with the greatest growth in new markets.

Meanwhile, one of the challengers to Opera, Skyfire, has updated its browser with release .85 and made this available as a beta in north America and the UK on Symbian and Windows Mobile. It has added the ability to send web content by SMS, a 'super bar' similar to Firefox' 'Awesome Bar', and support for additional handsets such as those running Series 60 3rd Edition, Windows Mobile 6.1 plus the Palm 800W and HTC Touch Diamond.