Re:Facebook To Buy Opera? Maybe.
by kristofferR on Friday May 25, 2012 @01:24PM
(#4024510)
My experience is actually that 3G service is a lot cheaper in poor countries than in rich countries. They can't overprice it, they wouldn't get any customers then.
For example - here in Cambodia I subscribe to a 2GB 3,5G package for just $5 a month. The reception and speed is great in urban areas.
However, if you're just talking about extremely poor countries without any 3G service, then you're absolutely correct. There's not too many of them left though, just some countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Mobile data is getting cheap incredibly fast and betting a company on providing data compression is stupid. It has worked out well for Opera so far (kudos to them, I'm Norwegian), but continuing to base their income on it is a losing battle. They have to pivot in order to still be relevant and being bought by Facebook is, in my opinion, a good way of doing it.
For example - here in Cambodia I subscribe to a 2GB 3,5G package for just $5 a month. The reception and speed is great in urban areas.
However, if you're just talking about extremely poor countries without any 3G service, then you're absolutely correct. There's not too many of them left though, just some countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Mobile data is getting cheap incredibly fast and betting a company on providing data compression is stupid. It has worked out well for Opera so far (kudos to them, I'm Norwegian), but continuing to base their income on it is a losing battle. They have to pivot in order to still be relevant and being bought by Facebook is, in my opinion, a good way of doing it.