One Reason why Testing for Opera Is Important

There are many reasons why it is important to test your web sites in Opera. I’m just going to focus on one here–the mobile market. The mobile web has been getting a lot more press recently, and it is a market where Opera is in a very strong position, and is moving from strength to strength. It the last quarter we announced that Opera Mini alone had over 15.8 million unique users in the month of July, up from 3.5 million in July 2007. It grew from 850 million web pages viewed to 3.7 billion, a year on year growth of 330%. This generated 44.5 terabytes of compressed traffic, or 296.6 terabytes if the data wasn’t compressed by the Opera Mini servers. This growth is only going to get fuelled as Opera signs more deals with operators for pre-installing Opera Mini. Away from Opera Mini, the first beta of Opera Mobile 9.5 came out recently, and it is already being shipped pre-installed on some popular high end phones.

Operators shipping Opera Mini pre-installed

The following operators are shipping Opera Mini by default on their range of phones. We usually find that traffic and unique users go up quite a bit after we are pre-installed on operators phones. For web developers, Opera Mini being pre-installed means that you can almost guarantee that Opera Mini will be available, and it becomes much more important to support Opera on your site if a major operator in your target markets ship with Opera Mini on their phones. Some operators re-badge Opera Mini to their own branding and some keep it as Opera Mini. The browser will always report it is Opera Mini of you detect the User Agent however.

The Americas

  • Helio (USA) Now owned by Virgin Mobile
  • Movistar (Mexico, Colombia)

Europe

  • Vodafone D2 (Germany)
  • T-Mobile (UK, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Netherlands, Macedonia)
  • O2 (Germany, Slovakia)
  • Telefónica Móviles (Spain)
  • Ten by Orange (France)
  • Swisscom (Switzerland)
  • Telenor (Serbia)
  • PTC Era (Poland)
  • mobilkom (Austria)
  • MegaFon (Russia)
  • Debitel (Germany)
  • Talkline (Germany)
  • Meteor (Ireland)
  • TMN (Portugal)
  • Optimus (Portugal)
  • TDC (Denmark)
  • Pannon (Hungary)
  • Omnitel (Lithuania)
  • TIM Hellas (Greece)
  • HT Telecom (Europe)

Asia

  • Telenor (Pakistan)
  • GrameenPhone (Bangladesh)
  • Mobitel (Sri Lanka)
  • Tata Teleservices (India)
  • Spice (India)

Africa

  • MTN (Uganda)

In addition to those above, in Japan Opera Mobile ships as the default browser on the KDDI network. In Japan Opera Mobile is shipped in preference of Opera Mini as phones are higher-end and networks are typically fast. KongZhong Corporation in China distribute a customised version of Opera Mini called KongZhong Opera 3.0. Many of the networks above are the major players in their respective markers. According to Wikipedia, T-Mobile is 3rd in the UK, 2nd in Slovakia, Austria and The Netherlands and 1st in Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary and Macedonia. Vodafone is 2nd in Germany, O2 is 4th in Germany and 3rd in Slovakia, Swisscom is 1st in Switzerland, Telefónica is 1st in Spain, TMN is 1st in Portugal, while Optimus is 3rd, mobilkom is 1st in Austria, MegaFon is 3rd in Russia, Meteor is 3rd in Ireland, Era is 3rd in Poland, Omnitel is 1st in Lithuania, Pannon is 2nd in Hungary, TDC is 1st in Denmark and Telenor is 2nd in Serbia. In Asia KDDI is 2nd in Japan, GrameenPhone is 1st in Bangladesh, Telenor is 3rd in Pakistan, Mobitel is 2nd in Sri Lanka, and Tata is 5th in India. In Africa, MTC is 1st in Uganda. In The Americas Movistar is 2nd in Mexico and Colombia.

Phones with Opera Pre-installed

Opera Mobile was shipped on 7.8 million phones in the second quarter of this year, including 35 new phone models this year. Opera Mini has shipped on 78 new phones this year so far.

Manufacturers that shipped Opera Mini pre-installed

  • Nokia
  • Sony Ericsson
  • Motorola
  • Samsung
  • LG
  • Micromax
  • Uriver
  • Fly (India)
  • Spice (India)

Manufacturers that shipped Opera Mobile pre-installed

  • HTC (Windows Mobile)
  • Sony Ericsson (UIQ and Brew)
  • Samsung (Windows Mobile)
  • Motorola (UIQ, Windows Mobile and Linux)
  • Casio (Brew)
  • Hitachi (Brew)
  • Kyocera (Brew)
  • Panasonic (Brew)
  • Pantech (Brew)
  • Sanyo (Brew)
  • Sharp (Brew)
  • Toshiba (Brew)
  • WILLCOM (Windows Mobile)

Opera Mobile is the default browser on the UIQ platform, which is shipped by manufacturers like SonyEricsson and Motorola. Opera Mobile 8.65 is the default browser on select P2K models, post-V3 RAZR. P2K is Motorola‘s mass-market feature phone operating system. Opera Mobile is also the default browser on KDDI’s Brew platform, where it is branded as PC Site Viewer. In the west, some of the more exciting phones that Opera was included on are Windows Mobile phones such as the HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Pro, Samsung Omnia, and the Motorola MOTO Q9e. The Samsung Omnia and the HTC phones are especially well suited to mobile browsing, with large high resolution touch screens and high end specifications. Opera has also recently announced that Opera 9.5 will be included on the NVidea Tegra family of computer-on-chip Windows Mobile and Windows CE solutions. This chipset should be included on high end phones in the future.

As Opera Mini and Opera Mobile run on Opera’s Presto rendering engine, making your site work in the Opera browser will bring you a long way to being compatible with our mobile browsers, and will make your site available to the customers of all the mobile operators and device manufacturers listed above. The number of users on the mobile web and Opera Mini and Mobile will only continue to grow in the future.