Opera Mini partnership with MediaTek will bring it to millions of feature phones

Opera announced today that it had signed an agreement with Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek that would see its Opera Mini mobile browser bundled with the latter’s MediaTek’s Runtime Environment (MRE) platform.

MediaTek is one of the leading chipset manufacturers servicing regions like the Asia-Pacific, with more than 40 percent of all phones in the Indian mobile market running on its chips. The MRE platform is a layer that allows third-party software companies to develop integrated apps for MediaTek’s affordable smart feature phones.

Opera announced last month that Opera Mini was used by over 140 million people around the world every month, with India having the second largest Opera Mini user-base. The partnership with MediaTek will see the browser, which uses compression technologies to allow for a fast Internet browsing experience even on slower connections, come preinstalled on even more inexpensive Internet-connected feature phones around the world.

Facebook also announced a similar partnership with MediaTek last month to embed its social networking features in MRE in a bid to extend its reach among users of feature phones. In India, its efforts to reach the millions of non-smartphone users have included a tie-up with Airtel to allow free Facebook access to its subscribers and the introduction of Vodafone’s ‘Facebook Phone’ in the country.