Opera Purchases Skyfire, Expands Mobile Web Browser Capability

You can say that the folks behind the Opera web browser have been kept pretty busy, where they recently announced that they will no longer support the Presto rendering engine, having decided to uproot and make a move over to Webkit. Now, we have news that they will fork out a whopping $155 million in order to pick up rival browser maker Skyfire. Similar to Opera in some ways, Skyfire has had a level of success in the mobile web browser market, where it delivers features which are not normally found on default browsers on platforms such as iOS and Android.

Both Opera and Skyfire mobile browsers are capable of playing nice with slow devices and slow Internet connections, as it will pre-render data on remote servers in order to help users save on bandwidth costs before sending images and other content to your handset. This acquisition will see Opera gain Skyfire’s software which converts Flash and other online video content into a mobile-friendly format, not to mention the Rocket Optimizer service which enables mobile operators to save further bandwidth by optimizing content prior to delivery. Captain Planet will definitely smile on this as their powers combine…

Edwin Kee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: opera, skyfire