The tech blogosphere is winding itself into a tizzy over the news that the iPad 3 will be unveiled next week, but there’s already been a fair amount of unrelated mobile device news coming out of Europe, specifically at the Mobile World Congress, a mobile trade conference going on in Barcelona, Spain.
On Monday, Opera, a Norwegian software company famed for its slick, speedy, innovative free web browsers of the same name, unveiled several major updates to its products, among them new social networking features for feature phones — those cheaper mobile phones made by the likes of Nokia that lack the processing capability and third-party app support of smartphones from Apple and Samsung and a steadily growing list of other companies.
Currently, Opera Mini, a browser that runs on feature phones as well as smartphones, is among the most popular mobile browsers in the world, second only to either Google’s Android browser or Apple’s Safari for iOS, according to the differing results of two market research firms. (Opera’s internal metrics indicate it is the most popular mobile web browser with 160 million users).
Now Opera is putting a new contender into the fray: Opera Mini Next, shown-off in Barcelona on Monday, is available now in developer preview, but will be rolling out for feature phones later this year. The new browser includes a way for users of feature phones to receive the latest updates from their favored social networks and websites.
That new Opera Mini Next feature is called “Smart Page.” It’s the first screen that feature phone users will see when opening the browser, and it includes built-in Facebook and Twitter integration, as well as shortcuts to user’s most-visited websites, all displayed without taxing the phone’s processing power or network connectivity.
“When people think of using social networks on the go, they often imagine a smartphone with the latest apps installed. At Opera, we know that’s not the way a majority of mobile phone owners access their social networks,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software in a statement. “That’s why we’ve made ‘ordinary’ phones smarter, by making it easier to use the most popular social networks right in the first screen of Opera Mini for feature phones. Just because you’re on a more basic phone, doesn’t mean you can’t be a active social networker.”
Indeed, to Boilesen’s point, a study published by market research firm IDC in early February found that though their shipment numbers declined markedly throughout the fourth quarter of 2011, feature phones continue to make up the majority of phones shipped around the globe.
Another late 2011 study by market research outfit Vision Mobile found that globally, the feature phone remains the most used mobile device, at 73 percent market share compared to 27 percent for smartphones.
There’s no denying that the smartphone is indeed on the ascent, especially in so-called “developed” countries. A 2011 study on smartphone adoption commissioned by Google — the company behind the Android smartphone operating system — found that feature phone adoption in the US, the UK, Germany, Japan and France found that in all countries surveyed, feature phone growth fell marked percentage points (most precipitously in the U.S.) as smartphone growth increased. “Consumers are clearly shifting from feature phones to smartphones and are increasingly using their smartphones for Internet access,” the study concluded.
And one hand, Opera is attempting to capitalize on that trend, on Monday releasing new versions of Opera Mini for the iPhone and Opera Mobile for Android.
But the developing world is dominated by feature phones. Although Vision Mobile found that in North America, smartphone penetration has eclipsed that of feature phones, at 63 percent, feature phones reign supreme in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and Latin America, with all three regions reporting over 80 percent feature phone market share.
Not only that, but feature phones turn an even healthier profit margin for most manufacturers than smartphones, as Extreme Tech‘s Sebastian Anthony discovered when digging through the earnings numbers of major companies at the end of January this year. Nokia led the way with a 13 percent profit margin, leading Anthony to explain the situation as follows:
There’s no way that billions of people living in developing countries will magically find the money to buy an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy phone. Nokia and other white label Asian OEMs are all competing for a slice of the huge dumbphone markets in China, India, and Brazil. Market forces (and Moore’s law) dictate that they grow in features and coolness, and eventually there will be very little difference between a dumbphone and a smartphone. Screen size alone will decide which side of the fence a device falls on.
It’s precisely this increasingly connected market that Opera intends to court with its Opera Mini Next browser, and court hard. The company outlined an ambitious proposal to TPM of where it sees its role in the mobile marketplace going forward.
“While everyone talks mostly about smartphones, we see that feature phones are still the bulk of all phones sold,” said Thomas Ford, senior communications manager at Opera. “There are literally another billion people who will make their maiden connection to the web on a phone, so we believe that market deserves a great browser. Because of both device and network limitations, Opera Mini is therefore a great option. It reduces data use, so it also makes mobile browsing cheaper in many markets. That’s critical if you really want to make the web available to another billion people.”
Opera has some critical partners in this effort, including MTN, Africa’s “leading telecommunications provider,” which has been bundling a special co-branded version of Opera with its phones following a partnership that was publicized in August 2011. That partnership has propelled Nigeria, one of Africa’s tech leaders, into the fourth largest country for Opera use. Other Africans have benefitted from the partnership, as Opera was only to happy to point out in a press statement.
“Opera Mini has made my life much easier because it is fast and works across the country,” says Variety Marewa, a Rwandan entrepreneur, in the Opera statement. “I can check web mail, keep in touch and informed at less than 85% of what it used to cost me.”
And Opera’s continuing to put its money where its mouth is, launching an entirely new secure online payment exchange through its Opera Mini browser on Tuesday. The new Opera Payment Exchange (OPX), will “act as a glue between content providers, publishers and mobile billing systems and digital payment gateways, while building trust with end consumers,” the company said in a statement. (Opera, which gives away its browsers for free, makes money from search royalties paid by major search engines for queries made through Opera, and from phone companies that embed the browser in their phone as default.)
Still, the question remains whether Opera’s strategy will pay off longterm. And on one final note: Although TPM’s latest internal browser metrics reveal a decisive shift to mobile, Opera Mini makes up only 0.17 percent of visits to the website.
