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Opera claims to save Africans R905 million in data costs

Mobile data might be widely available in South Africa, but it sure isn’t cheap.

With that in mind, Mobile browser Opera claims that it can save you a ton of money, and has already saved Africans R905 million in data costs.

Opera claims that through its own research (and advanced compression technology) Opera Mini mobile browsers in Africa used up to 82% less mobile data in October.

“South African users enjoyed around a $65 million (R905 million) saving over the ten months and Nigerians saved a whopping $198 million (N39.5 billion). Africa accounts for around a third of Opera’s users globally and Nigeria is Opera’s third largest market in terms of numbers of users,” Opera said in a statement.

It went on to explain that, on average, Opera Mini users on Java-based phones saved around 88% in mobile data, with smartphone users being slightly less at 76%. Strangely, iOS users saved less (70%) than Android (75%), but that is probably down to the architecture of each mobile device.

“With around 40% of Opera Mini users in Africa now on more data-hungry Android devices, compression technology is more relevant than ever before. The cost of smartphones is declining but research also shows that only 50% of Africans can afford more than 20MB per month. Data is still prohibitively expensive for many.”

And in case you were wondering where Opera got all this information, the data is based on aggregated information obtained from the Opera Mini servers.

In terms of the tech used by Opera, the compression technology scales down webpages down to as little as 10% of its original size.

If we can save a couple of bucks here and there, we are all for switching to a new mobile browser.

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