Introducing Oupeng, a Chinese Opera

August 9, 2011 · by Bruce Lawson

Today we launched Oupeng, a joint venture with Telling Telecom, China’s top mobile phone distributor. Oupeng is Opera Mini that, along with all the usual features of Opera Mini, has two additional features.

There is a portal pulling together various news sources: we have a server cluster for processing/ datamining microblog content and we use machine intelligence to rank top news into different categories for Chinese users. Also, there is a Weibo client (according to Wikipedia, Weibo is "a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook, it is one of the most popular sites in China … [with] more than 195 million users").

Oupeng browser is Opera Mini, with the familiar big 'O' logo. We've given it a Chinese name, Oupeng (欧朋), which means "friends from Europe" because most Chinese users find the word "Opera" hard to pronounce or spell. And because we're friendly. And from Europe.

The User Agent string is "Opera/9.80 (Android; Opera Mini/6.1.25764/25.718; U; zh) Presto/2.5.25 Version 10.54". Replace "Android" with the platform it's actually on, of course! Note that this is identical to non-Oupeng versions of Opera Mini.

The browser itself has some UI customisations. There is an exit button. More excitingly, instead of the familiar 9 speed dial entries, there will be 27 speed dials, which can be increased up to 63. (If you think typing on a virtual keyboard is a pain in English, try it with Chinese characters!)

For those developers who are interested in user numbers, Opera Software is the world’s leading mobile browser provider, with more than 130 million people using Opera on their phone every month. Telling Telecom is China’s top mobile phone distributor, shipping more than 30 million handsets in 2010 alone. That's a lot of handsets and a lot of Opera.

Developing for mobile browsers is covered in Mobile-friendly: The mobile web optimization guide; specific optimisations for Oupeng and Opera Mini information can be found in Opera Mini web content authoring guidelines.

Readers' comments 12

Left under the original article, as archived.

Mağruf ÇolakoğluTuesday, August 9, 2011 8:00:04 PM
QuHnoTuesday, August 9, 2011 9:28:41 PM
Will it take long until the improvements made with that version come to the normal mini too?
JarradTuesday, August 9, 2011 11:15:42 PM
If used outside china, are there any restrictions on what internet content can be accessed?

[[can a mod remove the above anon comment? didn't realize I wasn't logged in. ]]
Bruce LawsonWednesday, August 10, 2011 2:24:17 PM
Jarrad

as it's a product intended for mainland China, it uses the Mini server clusters in China (as we're required to do by the government). That's hardwired into the product. The server farm is behind the Firewall.
JarradWednesday, August 10, 2011 2:50:08 PM
Thanks for the clarification, Bruce; well done on the business deal too, it's nice to know that you guys can continue to have an income while making your consumer products free for the end-user.
Rafael LuikWednesday, August 10, 2011 6:51:51 PM
Hahaha, the name! And the number of Speed Dial items!
JimThursday, August 11, 2011 3:10:08 AM
Originally posted by brucelawson:

Jarrad

as it's a product intended for mainland China, it uses the Mini server clusters in China (as we're required to do by the government). That's hardwired into the product. The server farm is behind the Firewall.

So basically they figured out that Opera Mini was bypassing their firewall and now your allowing censorship?

You do understand your code will be stolen by them?
Bruce LawsonThursday, August 11, 2011 7:02:07 AM
Jim,

The law says the servers must be in China. We obey the law.
JimFriday, August 19, 2011 3:53:31 PM
Originally posted by brucelawson:

Jim,

The law says the servers must be in China. We obey the law.

Yes I know that. I'm just saying that people have been imprisoned because of other internet companies following that law.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/21/news/international/pluggedin_fortune/

And China has a history of stealing intellectual property from businesses.
ChrisMonday, September 19, 2011 9:59:11 AM
Originally posted by toyotabedzrock:

So basically they figured out that Opera Mini was bypassing their firewall and now your allowing censorship?

No, China is censoring. Opera is just doing what's necessary for Chinese people to be able to access the web.

Anyway, this is old news. Why are you trolling about it now? Opera's servers ouside China are blocked, so what are you trying to say? That Chinese people shouldn't be able to access the web at all?

Originally posted by toyotabedzrock:

Yes I know that. I'm just saying that people have been imprisoned because of other internet companies following that law.
No they haven't. Being blocked from a site doesn't get you arrested.

Quit trolling.
QuHnoTuesday, September 20, 2011 4:54:27 AM
Originally posted by Slamdex:

Anyway, this is old news.
You are late. When he posted it it was new news.
Originally posted by toyotabedzrock:
Yes I know that. I'm just saying that people have been imprisoned because of other internet companies following that law.
No they haven't. Being blocked from a site doesn't get you arrested. Quit trolling.

You should tell that to these people:
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,RSF,,CHN,,4ae169e11e,0.html

It isn't about blocking alone, it is about surveillance. If the chinese authorities want a user's surf data from a provider they are entitled to get them by their law - and that is what gets people arrested[/url].

On the other hand: Should Opera stay out of China?
Absolutely not!

Just because the Chinese government is repressive it doesn't mean, that any company should leave the normal people, who are just like you and me, in the stone age - quite the opposite:
The more people have access to Internet technology, the more people start talking (fig.) to other people outside of their own neighborhood. There is always information leakage, and be it in a way that someone writes about his holiday in some other country or that they built a new road in one town but not the other.

Talking people sooner or later start changing things. Giving people the key to communication, even as limited as it might be, is giving people the key to freedom.

Knowledge is power and it is harder for governments to hide the dark spots if people have the means to watch them.
ChrisThursday, October 13, 2011 2:03:01 PM
Originally posted by QuHno:

You are late. When he posted it it was new news.
It was not. Opera servers outside of China were blocked ages ago, forcing Opera to create a separate version for China.