Hello everyone! 

I hope you are all staying safe and well wherever you are.

At Opera we have been developing fast and secure browsers for nearly 25 years. In the African region, we were the first technology company to bring an online mobile browsing experience. 

Today, there are more than 3.5 billion people around the world using smartphones. Recent reports indicate that in the African region alone, there are more than 1.8 billion mobile phone connections and more than 435 million internet users, from which 86% of mobile users choose Android as their mobile operating system.

If you are the owner of an Android smartphone, you are probably familiar with apps like Google Chrome, Samsung Internet, and other mobile browsers that come pre-installed on such devices. However, at Opera we have a long tradition of challenging the status quo. We love technology and we breathe innovation, therefore, we develop our browsers with unique features that no other mobile browser in the Google Play Store can offer. This philosophy has taken us far and today millions of people all over Africa choose our mobile browsers over those pre-installed on their smartphones.

Opera Mini is by far our most popular browser in the African region. When we looked into why people across Africa are choosing Opera Mini, we identified five main reasons. 

1. The fastest browsing experience 

Opera Mini is a small, fast and powerful browser. The reason Opera Mini is faster than other browsers is that it has the capability of pre-processing and reducing the amount of data from a website before it reaches your phone. This allows for faster navigation, drastically increasing your browsing speed. 

Moreover, we have recently installed new data centres in Nigeria and Kenya. What this means is that every time you use Opera Mini you have the fastest and more reliable connection. This is because local data servers reduce latency when you are browsing due to their strategic geographical locations.

You can be certain that when you use Opera Mini, you browse 4 times faster than with other browsers. 

2. Less spent on mobile data with data compression

Opera Mini is also a great browser if you want to get more value from your mobile data. It comes with unique data compression technology that saves you up to 90% of your mobile data. When you enable data savings, you consume less data while enjoying more browsing. Other browsers like Google Chrome can only provide an average of 9% data savings.

When you enable data savings in both apps, you also extend your data plan or data bundles. This is great for you as you won’t need to buy data as often. 

3. Improved download manager 

Everyone downloads files from the web, from flight tickets to videos and images. The Opera Mini browser integrates a download manager that gives you control over every file that you download.

The download manager in Opera Mini has a speed meter inspired by the speedometers in cars. It tells you the current download speed and estimated download time. You can see how your network connection affects download speed in real time.

4. Safer browsing experience 

Opera Mini has always been a speed-demon browser, which is why it was important for us to bring ad blocking to our users. The Opera Mini browser works seamlessly on slow connections, optimizes online video to reduce buffering delays, and compresses the size of web pages for faster browsing. Introducing ad blocking for faster web page loading is just one more way we show our commitment to speed.

The reason why Opera Mini’s ad blocker speeds up your internet connection is that the Ad blocking in Opera Mini happens on the Opera servers, before the ads on the web reach your phone. When ad blocking is enabled, Opera Mini does not even request the ad information from the website you’re visiting.

Ad blocker is a highly-appreciated feature. By adding our ad blocking technology to the Opera Mini browser, we make sure that you browse faster with less mobile-data usage and less distractions on your phone.

5. Your favorite music wherever you go!

Everyone loves music and the rhythms of West Africa have recently taken off all around the world. Therefore, we’ve partnered up with Mdundo, a Kenyan based music streaming startup that fully supports independent African artists. 

What we’ve done is integrated a Free Music channel in Opera Mini powered by Mdundo. All you need to do is open Opera Mini and the homepage will present you with the 100 most popular songs in your country. You can stream those songs directly from Opera Mini, making it easy for you to switch between listening to your favorite music and reading news articles, all in one place.

By adding Mdundo’s music catalogue to Opera Mini, we are making your browser the perfect companion so you can take your music everywhere. This is ideal when you are on the go as you don’t need to spend your mobile data using other video applications to listen to your music. Another smart way to save your data!

Featured in Google Play

We also want to let you know that Opera Mini has become a featured app on Google Play. This means that it will be easier to discover for Android users around the world. Needless to say, we are very happy about it.

If you haven’t tried our browser yet, go to Google Play and look in the featured apps—it has now become even easier to find it.

We are always happy to hear from you. Tell us in the comment section below which are your favorite Opera Mini features.

Happy browsing!

MdundoOperaOpera Mini

---