“Telcos are keen on lightweight browsers as a means to reduce the pressure on their networks while also encouraging users to buy affordable data plans. Handset makers like it too: from 2015, Microsoft will pre-load Opera Mini on its low and mid-market Nokia phones in India.

Naturally, the desire to drive mobile web usage is especially strong in Asia, where hundreds of millions of users still have feature phones.”

How the Opera Web Pass is increasing data consumption in Asia tells us some interesting facts, some of them are true for most of us, too): In spite of the  broad distribution of Android as an operating system for mobile smart phones, usage in the Asian Pacific regions is comparably low. This is, because the concept of when a “Megabyte” ends and another one starts when buying data, does not really compute on anyone. The Opera WebPass helps in buying data in a way that people can relate to. Opera Mini compresses data in an intelligent manner and helps people reduce cost, and therefore, Opera (hereabouts hardly ever used or found in the browser statistics) is all the rage in the APAC region.

Myanmar, with Oredoo and Telenor going to launch 3G is one of the next places, where Opera will be trying to expand.