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| Opera fine-tunes mobile entertainment |
| BS Reporter / Mumbai Jul 26, 2011, 00:09 IST |
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Opera Software and UTV Indiagames plan to offer gaming content on Opera Mini browsers, which are optimised for surfing on cellphones. Starting this month, Opera Mini browsers will sport a UTV Indiagames icon that would allow users a one-click access to play games—from puzzles to action and strategy. Existing users, however, would have to upgrade their Opera Mini browsers.
“Opera users can access high-definition games on their mobile devices, including DLF IPL Cricket, Pirates of the Caribbean and Cars 2,” says Samir Bangara, chief operating officer, UTV Indiagames, an integrated game developer-publisher across mobile, online and interactive TV platforms. “The Speed Dial (Opera's browser bookmark) solves the 'discovery' problem and gives users immediate and convenient access to thousands of games and other entertainment products tailored for their mobile phones,” he says.
Meant essentially for low-end Java-based phones, Opera Mini is the most downloaded browser in India and is available for over 3,000 handset models. Opera's own estimates suggest an estimated 113.5 million Indian subscribers used the browser in May, and 9.6 petabytes of operator data was compressed for Opera Mini users.
Mobile browsers, also called microbrowsers, minibrowsers, or wireless internet browsers, are designed for use on mobile devices such as cellphones. They were typically stripped-down web browsers, but some mobile browsers can handle more recent technologies like CSS 2.1, JavaScript, and Ajax. Apart from offerings from Firefox, Apple, Microsoft and Opera, Bolt and Skyfire offer mobile browsers as well.
Opera, which has seen a steady rise in its mobile browser adoption this year, says entertainment portals like Vuclip (a mobile-optimised video site) and Mobile2Day (another mobile portal) are the newest additions to top 10 mobile websites, indicating sites intended primarily for mobile access are gaining in importance. With mobile entertainment consumption on the rise, Opera has also collaborated with digital content providers like Hungama for music tracks, videos, wallpapers, and ringtones. “We have seen in addition to search, email and social networking, Indians are increasingly logging on to download portals. It was logical for us to seek a partnership with Hungama.com, which has an impressive collection of content,” says Lars Boilesen, chief executive, Opera Software.
An Ericsson Consumer Lab report says today, 76 per cent spend more time on mobile internet than on a PC. “Smartphone users consume over 280 Mb of data every month, compared with 105-Mm data by a feature phone user,” says the report. Ericsson’s finding echo Opera’s belief in mobile entertainment. “Video-based applications were more popular compared to TV-based apps, with a third of 3G handset users having used video-based applications at least once in the month,” the report adds.
According to Statcounter data, the Opera mobile browser accounts for a market share of about 56 per cent in India, followed by Nokia’s mobile optimised browser with 26 per cent share. The Netfront browser trails at about five per cent. Nokia has also been working on bundling mobile entertainment on its browsers. The Finnish company released an updated Ovi Browser for S40 (entry-level) phones, and has updated browsers for its Symbian 3 (smartphone) devices.
Nokia's browser claims to support up to 85 languages, gives one-click access to sites such as Twitter, Orkut, Amazon and IMDB. “The Series 40 browser features a proxy server facility, which reduces the data rate for page loads by 90 per cent. This is done by using the remote server to pre-process pages, so that they're optimised for smaller screens. Further extensions to the capabilities of Series 40 devices are a key part of Nokia's strategy announced on February 11, as the company moves to provide mobile devices for the 'next billion' users,” according to Nokia's official blog.
Unlike Opera, Nokia is investing its focus on making its browser render web pages faster. Symbian Anna, the company's updated Symbian version, comes with an updated browser, version 7.3. Nokia claims the new version of the browser has been created using a newer version of WebKit—a new JavaScript engine—and has been optimised for Symbian.
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