Access to the Internet remains a challenge for those with limited financial resources. Especially in highly impoverished countries, many people are unable to afford both a smartphone and a mobile data plan. For nearly 20 years, this demographic has been a crucial business segment for Opera, despite being often overlooked in industrialised countries.
Often forgotten are the around 125 million monthly active Internet users listed in Opera’s statistics. Only very few amongst them can afford a megabyte of data to access a website. There are notable differences between Opera Mini variants: the version for feature phones needs to be a lot more cautious with data usage than the Android version. Smartphones not only boast more powerful hardware but also tend to have more data volume at their disposal. According to the company, Opera Mini for feature phones can use compression technology to reduce data usage down to 10% of the original amount, compared to 60% on smartphones.
Despite these challenges, Opera Mini continues to enable Internet access on feature phones and low-end smartphones, even managing to generate revenue in the process, as Tim Lesnik, product manager for Opera Mini, told Notebookcheck.com.
Opera Mini makes money through Speed Dial
The company generates revenue primarily through advertising in these markets. Opera Mini’s Speed Dial entries, in particular, are highly valuable, even more so than in the desktop version.
This is because searching for contents and typing URLs are more challenging on a feature phone. The earnings from Speed Dials are so substantial that Opera can even offer free Internet access. In Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia, there are various ongoing campaigns to provide Opera Mini users with a set amount of free data everyday – up to 50 megabytes in some cases.
Africa is thus a key focus region for Opera. Lesnik mentioned that the number of Opera users in Nigeria grew by around 30% when the campaign launched there in 2019. Similar growth has occurred in other countries as well. As at August 2024, Opera has garnered roughly 5 million connected users through this offer, .
The free data campaign is set to expand to more countries soon, with a launch in Tanzania on the horizon, followed by Ghana and Kenya. Even so, users need to discover this offer first, since Opera Mini usually must be actively installed on a phone.
That said, Opera Mini isn’t capable of handling every task. For instance, video playback remains an issue on feature phones. Whilst Opera Mini may be able to play videos in some cases, this is limited to newer 4G feature phones and, expectedly, the Android version. It may help that YouTube is sometimes a Speed Dial customer.
This sort of support from large corporations is no longer a given. According to Lesnik, Facebook has cut back its implementations on feature phones, for example, which is surprising given how important this market once was for the company’s growth.
Asia: Opera Mini is more popular on smartphones
Besides Africa, Opera is also active in Asian countries with Opera Mini. Lesnik said Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Pakistan are the company’s main markets. Those who follow consumer tech in the region may wonder why Opera Mini still has a market there.
According to Lesnik, this mostly boils down to legacy users, meaning older consumers who haven’t switched to smartphones. By contrast, younger generations in these countries tend to use mid-range devices. Additionally, the install base of Opera Mini on feature phones is very low relative to the smartphone version. Only ten percent of the total installations run on a feature phone, with the rest on a smartphone.
Lesnik noted that this also increases the competition. The emergence of 4G feature phones makes it easier for providers to bring higher data rates to target groups. The UC browser, which also compresses data, could be considered a competitor in the Android space.
By contrast, Opera Mini’s install base in Africa shows a 46/54 percent split between feature phones and smartphones. This explains the company’s continual strong focus on Africa as a market. According to Lesnik, the company consequently isn’t going to stop developing the browser even though it has been largely forgotten in industrialised countries. Occasionally, Opera Mini has even received major improvements. For example, Opera added football results to Opera Mini’s start page in 2022, probably because Lesnik himself is a football fan.
Source: Opera wants to enable free web browsing in more countries with Opera Mini
