Opera Software, a Norwegian company best known for its mobile Web browser Opera Mini, on Saturday received its first ever African award from the Africa Technology Awards held in Johannesburg.
Opera was awarded for empowering millions of Africans across the continent by giving them a free browser, which saves the users up to 90 percent of data costs on any network and more than 3,000 different mobile devices.
Opera Software CEO Lars Boileson said the growth and adoption of Opera Mini in Africa over the past couple of years provided an extraordinary experience.
“For many people on the continent, the first time they access the Web is on a mobile phone, but this can be really expensive if they use other browsers,” Boileson said.
Boileson added that with Opera Mini, users spend significantly less, and even network operators are happy since subscribers can browse while using the same bandwidth as any other browser would use for just one person.
Opera Mini uses advanced compression technology, saving users up to 90 percent of data, at the same time, a special data counter tracks the savings keeping the users updated.
Opera Mini has been tremendously adopted across Africa, with Nigeria being ranked third in the world for Opera use. Earlier in February 2012, Opera reported its users on MTN’s grew by 1665 percent.
The Africa Technology Awards celebrates innovation powering the future of marketing and revolutionizing the way people work and communicate across the continent of African region’s technology industry, and honours outstanding Technology Companies and Executive of the Year.
Opera was nominated under the Software Company of the Year. This year’s awards took place in Johannesburg.
