Though most of us using smartphone these days, either use Chrome or Safari, Opera Mini (yes, the only browser which worked blazingly fast on those old Symbian powered Nokia phones) has quietly made inroads, specially in India, with over 50 Million users in the subcontinent.
As per a report in Times of India, India has now become the largest user base for Opera Mini, with more than 50 Million users. Moreover, Opera Software chief executive Lars Boilesen is confident that this number will double up to 100 million by next year.
So what makes Opera’s CEO so confident. Well, India is one of those nations, where a large number of mobile users are still using Nokia’s Xpress Browser (which Nokia itself abandoned more than a year ago). Now, after Microsoft’s $7.5 Billion acquisition of the Finnish brand’s mobile business, 100 million Nokia’s Xpress web browser users have been asked to migrate to Opera Mini, which has become the default browser for Microsoft’s feature phones and the Asha phones.
Microsoft, though has now launched its own Lumia series, it will continue to provide service support to all the Asha phones, bought till date. Most of the Asha customers are not going anywhere, at least for an year or two, thus allowing Opera, to grow its user base further.
Opera Mini also comes for Android, though hasn’t been much popular due to much more stable players in the market, specially Google’s Chrome.
