Opera reports record results on operator support
Despite pressure from vendors' own high end browsers, Opera Mini is thriving on carrier branded platforms
Published: 26 August, 2011
READ MORE: Financial | Opera | Applications (Browser)
Opera Software may be out of the limelight as attention shifts to WebKit and to mobile browsers like Chrome OS and Safari, but it remains dominant on low end smartphones and this has driven the Norwegian firm to strong financial results.
The company has been challenged by the increasing tendency for high end smartphones to come with preloaded browsers that support WebKit and, unlike early releases, are highly functional - even RIM achieved a good browser with BlackBerry OS 7, and Google is now hinting at releasing full Chrome for Android, rather than the current non-WebKit default offering.
However, Opera's second quarter revenue was up 29% year-on-year to $40m and profit was even more buoyant, up 47% to $5.3m, both figures records for the company. The revenues come from various sources, including search advertising, licensing of the browser for preinstallation by OEMs and ODMs, and browsing services used by operators.
Operator deals were the biggest source of sales, rising 41% to $14m, and indicating the success of Opera's key strategy of recent years - targeting its slimline Opera Mini product at carriers in emerging markets, who typically brand their own handsets and web services, and want to provide a preintegrated software platform under their own name, and which is suited to midrange handset and connectivity capabilities.
One of the important elements of this strategy is the way that Opera Mini can use Opera servers to read web pages and send compressed versions to the user, which can make dramatic savings on bandwidth where users do not have high speed or reliable connections.
"In 2011, Opera continues to see high interest among operators in the emerging markets in particular for the operator co-branded Opera Mini solution, for which the browser home page promotes content services from both Opera (such as search) and the operator (such as games and music)," said the company in a statement. "For such agreements, Opera and the operator work together and undertake joint marketing initiatives to convert existing Opera-only branded Opera Mini users to the co-branded solution. Opera sees this as a compelling way to increase ARPU on its more than 115m Opera-branded Opera Mini users, while operators see such agreements as a way to increase data ARPU and profits."
However, as CNet points out, Opera's share of worldwide browser usage has been largely flat in recent months, though it is increasing in absolute terms by 20% on the desktop, 260% for carrier branded Opera Mini, and 1445 for its own-branded Opera Mini. In addition, Opera has over 10m users on consumer electronic devices such as TVs.
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