First up, I just want to say that Opera Mini is my favorite bit of software right now. This little, Java-based browser for mobiles is a slick package, making the mobile web faster, cheaper and an overall better experience.
I think ‘mini’ has begun to address many of the problems that I believe have slowed use of the mobile web (particularly here in New Zealand where mobile data rates are high).
But has Opera Mini’s success (Used by more than 44 million people - operamini.com) forced a change in thinking of the operator’s mobile web portals often referred to as the ‘walled gardens’. These portals such as Vodafone’s Live! were the first mobile web sites and portals which did and mostly still do live on the mobile operators network rather than in the all-access Internet. Thus, allowing the mobile operators to control the price for browsing, downloading content and using services.
But has Opera Mini forced a rapid change in this ‘walled garden’ model? I think so, but to fully explain why, we need to look at how Opera Mini surfs the mobile web because this is different to your PC browser and is the reason for Opera’s speed and ability to keep data to a minimum.
This is taken from the Opera Mini website:
Opera’s mobile software uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone.
Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transfers, enabling fast browsing experience at low costs even on simpler phones.
Put simply, the page you get in Opera Mini has been served via Opera’s servers rather than direct from the website server address you keyed into the address bar.
So what changing and what does this mean? Well we can only assume that Opera Mini’s success will translate into it being the pre-loaded browser on shipped handsets in the near future. This leaves some telco’s with a bit of a problem in that Opera Mini will not be able to be used with the existing portals that are not available on the open Internet (I did a few experiments to confirm my thinking last night).
The problem is that Opera Mini starts retrieving your page by asking the Opera server to get it, work it’s magic to reduce the size and then send it back to you in ‘mini’ form. If Opera’s server can’t access the page, then it can’t serve it up to you and this is exactly what happens in the case of a walled garden/portal that can only be accessed on the phone network.
So last weeks announcement by Vodafone NZ of a casual data rate ($1/day for up to 10MB) and that all data on Vodafone Live! will be charged at normal data rates rather than a free to browse - pay for services approach can be read that the portal is shifting to becoming a web portal on the Internet rather than being kept inside the network.
I just wonder whether the rising significance of Opera Mini and it’s method of fetching and pre-processing pages has been a key factor in this change of thinking?
Great post Darren. I actually just wrote something similar about how free services, open handsets and free location technology are forcing change in the mobile carrier market and I’m psyched about it!
Hi,
I found your blog through a vodafone live opea mini search on google. You seem to have also read that ibm red paper on the semi-walled garden. I have been using opera mini since its first release, and have built my own aggregation site for easy wap and xhtml content i access thorugh my phone, but have obviously been screwed since moving to nz, as data currently is $10 /Mbt, and it looks as if they calculate it in a rather shitty way as well. So I have been excited about this new $1/10Mbt deal, and the free content, including Wikipedia. But, it seems while my SE Z800i’s built in browser can reach the free content, my Opera Mini 3 will not. It has no problem cruising the rest of the web but try as I might, it refuses to go to http://live.vodafone.com Do you think they are barring it? Or is the wall of the semi walled garden excluding the Opera Mini server system?
Hi Nico,
Thanks for commenting. The reason you can’t reach live.vodafone.com on Opera mini is that Live! is on the Vodafone network and not on the Internet as such. This means the Opera servers can’t access it. Also your default browser probably connects via VFNZ Gateway rather than VFNZ Internet.
I think in time, Live! and other operator portals will move off the Network and onto the Web (the address will probably have to change to something like live.vodafone.co.nz as well).
As for data pricing, there is definitely a downward trend. In saying that, you can do a lot on your mobile for very little cost. I use my phone a lot for checking email (generally just headers only, but download if important) and reading news (m.nzherald.co.nz, just launched) and twitter (m.twitter.com). I generally don’t spend more than NZ$20 per month including my 3MB/$11.25 + NZ$2.25/MB over. That’s mostly due to OperaMini keeping the page sizes down.
Keep in touch.
Cheers,
Darren