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Karin Greve-Isdahl/Opera
Opera CEO Lars Boilesen took to the stage yesterday to celebrate his company’s Opera Mini mobile browser hitting the 50 million user mark in India. The CEO put on a show with a Bollywood flash dance alongside 50 other dancers at a New Delhi mall to the amusement of onlookers.
The mobile browser is now the third most popular app in India, behind messaging app WhatsApp and social media network Facebook. Opera says that smartphone users in India grew by 110 percent over the past year and now account for 50 percent of the user base.
This leaves 25 million Indian users still browsing the Web on non-smartphones running the Java-based version of the browser. The figure represents a huge untapped market for smartphone makers, who have eagerly ventured into the world’s second most populous country.
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Beside smartphone makers such as China’s Xiaomi (which regularly sells out online flash sales in a matter of seconds in India), Google has also taken an interest in the subcontinent with the launch of the recent Android One initiative. The search giant has partnered with local phone makers such as Micromax to make affordable $100 devices to increase smartphone usage in India.
With 50 million users, India is now the country with the largest number of Opera Mini users. The mobile browser boasts support for 13 of the languages used in India, including Hindi and Tamil, and offers data compression services to help users save on data. The browser also comes pre-installed on over 350 Android devices.
