It Voice News: If you are using any of the feature phones from Nokia, then get ready for a browser upgrade request soon.
A deal has been entered by Opera Software and Microsoft to replace Nokia’s Xpress browser in the almost dead feature phones. Opera Mini has been chosen as the replacement product. On Thursday, 21 August, Opera announced its Q2 earnings and it disclosed that revenue went up by 38 per cent over the year, taking the amount to $101 million during this phase.
Microsoft phone business’ head Rich Bernardo, said in a statement, “The agreement with Opera will enable us to provide stability of service as we transition from Xpress Browser to Opera Mini.” Opera CEO Lars Boilsesen said during a news conference, “We have signed a strategic licensing deal with Microsoft. We are basically taking over the browser building department in Nokia. “This means that Opera Mini becomes the default browser for Microsoft’s feature phone product lines and the Asha phones product.”
This new Opera platform covers devices like Series 30+, Series 40 and Asha series. These phones’ owners will be asked to upgrade from Xpress to Opera Mini. Xpress was Nokia’s brain child which uses Mozilla’s Gecko engine. However, the yet-to-be-launched feature phones will come with Opera Mini as the default browser. Opera Mini is built on an infrastructure of back-end servers which compress the data before it’s delivered to the browser.
Back in June, it was announced by Opera that the Android version of its browser will come as the default one in Nokia X series of forked-Android smartphones. Later, within a month, Nokia X died after the American technology vendor announced job cuts. Opera faced a huge setback but now they are again hopeful about this new deal, in regards to financial terms.
