In a press release March 10 2011 Opera Software announces that it has reached an agreement to establish a joint venture with the Chinese mobile phone distributor Telling Telecom Development Co.
Creating a customized browser for the Chinese market
Opera and Telling Telecom will together develop a mobile browser which is customized for the Chinese market – with browser technology from Opera together with Telling Telecom’s local content, operations and distribution network. Opera CEO Lars Boilesen describes the planned browser as “an entirely new product that suits the needs of Chinese consumers”.
The registered capital of the joint venture is 135 million RMB, and Opera will own up to 40% of the joint venture company.
100 million new users per month by 2014
With its new specialized browser, Opera hopes to gain more than 100 million users per month in China by 2014. This means a doubling of the current total number of global users of the company’s two mobile browsers Opera Mini and Opera Mobile.
Opera’s browsers are today already the world’s most used mobile browsers – ahead of both Apple, Nokia and Google.
Telling Telecom has more than 9000 employees and an 18 % share of the Chinese mobile phone distribution market. This includes 116 branch offices from 25 subsidiaries and more than 40 000 outlets across China.
“Together, we will make a strong impact to the current industry structure”, Telling Telecom CEO Huang Shaowen tells Reuters in an interview March 10.
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