Nokia Ditches Opera Web Browser

By | October 28, 2011 | 21 Comments

Nokia Ditches Opera Web Browser

Will use its own creation instead.

Nokia, the largest handset manufacturer in the world, is known to use the Opera Mini web browser in some of its products. However, things are about to change as with the launch of four new Series 40 devices, Nokia has decided to use its own web browser instead.

Just like Opera Mini or Amazon Silk, it will use a proxy browsing technology, which can compress web sites by up to 90%, saving bandwidth costs for the consumer. However, those are not the only devices to feature Nokia’s new toy. Earlier this month, a Finnish company has announced C2-05 and the X2-05 cell phones with the exact same technology.

One might ask, how did they come up with such idea? Back in March, 2010, Nokia has acquired Novarra, Illinois based company that specializes in web browsers and this is exactly where the technology comes from.

While Opera Mini was the first and only web browser to have a web page compression feature for quite some time, there appears to be an underlying trend, which now threatens to eliminate one of the main selling points of the mobile Opera web browsers.

Via: Nokia Press


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Nobody

    i wonder what took them so long..

    • Guest

      The Novarra browser sucked. They had to make it suck less. I fear they probably failed, just like they did with their failed webkit browser.

  • IE & Opera FanBoy

    Wondering what advantage nokia would get, by adding their own browser. Will it reduce the cost ? 

    • http://www.favbrowser.com Vygantas Lipskas

      Revenues from search deals :)

  • Armin

    As usual, Opera comes up with something way before anyone else only for it to become standard later on as the far larger companies realize what a good idea it is and implement it themselves. In this case the companies are Amazon and Nokia.

    • Nobody

      ..and other companies benefit from these inventions much more than opera. because these are much more polished and MUCH MUCH better sold

      isnt that a textbook example of opera being a looser?

      • Somebody

        LOLwut? Opera browser may it be for desktop or mobile is more polished than any competitor..! The only reason its not as famous is because its an norwegian based company. And also it doesnt have the marketing power that of google.

        • Supahacka

          Did you just call Norway bad?

        • Anonymous

          Who cares if they in Norway.

          They just fail at making a impact.

          Opera is the Linux of Browsers.

          • Dante

            “Opera is the Linux of Browsers.”
            It`s not true because OperaMini is second most used browser.

          • http://www.rudivisser.com/ Rudi Visser

            On mobile devices, the same way linux is most used OS on servers… I guess.

          • Mikah

            Its market share may be small but over 150 million users for a small company with only about 750 employees is not bad, the bottom line is its making plenty of money & Opera innovations like Speedial & Mouse Gestures have a big impact on  other browsers. 

      • Geek

        Nobody, maybe you should check profits of Amazon, Nokia and Opera last quarter and how many employees each company have. You are not only miserable troll but it seems also a looser

        • Anonymous

          I don’t see the correlation. It is not the others company’s fault that one company has less employees than the other.

          Why do you people blame others for Operas shortcoming?

          • TrollsomeMore

            #1 on mobile.

            Shortcoming?

      • Nerph

        LOL, Nokia’s browser “polished” :D Thanks for a good laugh!

        Nokia is losing the smartphone market to Android and iPhone, and the dumbphone market to MediaTek and other cheap Chinese phone manufacturers.

        What was that I heard about Opera being one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) mobile browsers in terms of users?

      • Mikah

        “isnt that a textbook example of opera being a looser?”
        Definitely not a textbook example its spelt loser 

        from the Urban dictionary 
        1.  looser A looser is a loser who can’t spell “loser”.Moron: “Hey man, you are teh looser!” Guy: “It’s spelled ‘loser’ you uneducated bastard.”
        http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=looser

      • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

        More polished? How?

  • Guest

    Nintendo has dumped Opera from the Nintendo products also. 3DS doesn’t ship with Opera and soon the Wii U will be the same.

    • Guest

      It’s more likely that Opera didn’t put in an offer to make the 3DS and Wii U browsers since they decided to aim for mobile operators and not OEMs from 2010 or so.

      The 3DS is a huge failure anyway. The Wii U will be too. Nintendo’s probably going out of business.

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      And in that case Nintendo haven’t made their own browser, they got ACCESS’ Netfront.

«
»