Opera has already launched a smaller version of the popular Opera News application dubbed Opera News Lite, designed for devices with limited data storage capabilities. With a download size of less than one megabyte, Opera News Lite is also a fast download for people on limited mobile networks.
At the end of last year, there were more than 3.8 billion mobile internet users in the world, with smartphones representing 65% of mobile connections according to GSMA. In many cases, those smartphones do not have enough storage capacity and some of them are located in remote areas that often struggle with network connectivity.
Opera News Lite has been optimized for such cases, making information more accessible for everyone regardless of geographical location or network connectivity conditions.
“We have developed Opera News Lite as per requests from our users. The app is extremely responsive on slow network conditions as it minimizes the use of data and resources. It also helps smartphone users save storage space on their mobile devices, especially for users with older handsets.” said Jørgen Arnesen, Head of Marketing and Distribution at Opera.
Opera News Lite offers the key features of the regular Opera News app such as personalized news articles, notifications about breaking news, and exclusive original content. However, Opera News Lite is ten times lighter than the regular version of the current version of the Opera News application.
Recently,Opera announced a new platform dubbed Opera News Hub in Kenya,its a new online editorial platform where Kenyan content creators can produce, share and monetize their own content across the Opera ecosystem.
Content creators who choose to produce their content with Opera News Hub have the potential to maximize their online visibility and reach an international audience of more than 350 million people using Opera products around the world.
Opera News Hub was initially launched in Lagos, Nigeria in September 2019. In less than six months, more than 35,000 African content creators have joined the platform and who upload thousands of articles to it everyday.
Opera News Hub also connects seamlessly with other Opera mobile applications, including the new standalone application Opera News Lite. This means that users in Kenya will be able to read more local stories when accessing the app thanks to the quick expansion of local authors on Opera News Hub.
Opera News Lite is powered by the same AI news engine used in the full version of Opera News and the popular Opera Mini browser. The AI system studies users’ news-reading behavior in real time and learns from it in order to provide them with personalized news. This means people get faster and easier access to the news and videos that interest them.
The new Opera local data center located in Mombasa has already proven to reduce connection latency, providing Nigerians with 4x faster navigation on any of the Opera products.
“We believe that Opera News Lite will become the fastest online news application on the market. Due to its unique characteristics and by connecting to our local data servers in Kenya, users can be confident that they will access news faster than before regardless of any connectivity conditions.” said Arnesen.