Takes on Opera, but what about operators?
What does Nokia’s acquisition of Novarra mean for operator and service provider customers of Novarra’s mobile internet optimisation service?
As well as browser technology, Novarra provides network acceleration and compression technology to provide data optimisation services to customers such as Verizon, Vodafone, Turkcell, 3 Hong Kong, Telecom Italia and Yahoo!
For example, Turkcell uses Novarra’s platform to reduce the data payload to smartphones accessing 3G video streaming services.
A Nokia spokesperson confirmed to Mobile Europe that Nokia would look to continue to support operator and service provider customers of Novarra.
Nokia said in its statement that it would use Novarra’s technology to enhance the mobile internet browsing experience for its feature phones. Nokia’s spokesperson told Mobile Europe that the aim is to open up the proxy-based browsing experience for feature phone users. Proxy-based browsing refers to the method of a browser request hitting a server, which then optimises data delivery to that device by compression, cacheing, and per device capabilities.
The spokesperson said that Nokia also envisages bringing the technology to bear to support access to Nokia’s own Ovi services from S40 devices. S40 devices are feature phone devices that are currently not geared up to accessing the sorts of services aimed at smartphones. This will see Nokia vertically integrate the browsing experience, controlling not just the content, but also the delivery of that content.
When Nokia has done this with other services, such as Messaging through its acquisition of Oz, or with Nokia Maps and Navteq, it has bought itself into a competitive position with operators, something that is well understood. Taking control of the browsing experience itself might enable Nokia to create an “Ovi” experience direct from the browser. It would also allow it to compete with the likes of Opera, which has established leadership in the mass-market browser space.
For operators, the upside could be increased data usage. If more featurephones come “out of the box” with an optimised browser then usage could increase. The potential downside would be increased Ovi presence in front of the consumer, in preference to operator content or browser-based applications.
Meanwhile, the value of enabling “lighter”, proxy-based browsing has been highlighted by Opera, a company that provides a downloadable browser aimed at improving the native mobile internet experience of many handsets.
Opera said today that in February 2010, Opera Mini users generated over 330 million MB of data for operators worldwide, down by 1.9% from January due to the shorter month. Opera said that data in Opera Mini is compressed by up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 3 petabytes of data in February.
Opera has claimed that its Mini product is earning operators $1.25 billion a year, although that number is based on an average value of a MB in each market, and assumes users don’t have unlimited data plans.
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