Opera goes to China with Oupeng browser launch

Opera has unveiled a new mobile browser called Oupeng for the Chinese market.

Launched on Tuesday in conjunction with phone distributor Telling Telecom, Oupeng is a version of Opera Mini that includes a news aggregator portal and a client for the Weibo social network. As its rendering servers are located behind the Great Firewall of China, it will not serve its users content that has been deemed unacceptable by the Chinese state.

The name 'Oupeng' means "friends from Europe", Opera web evangelist Bruce Lawson said in a blog post on Wednesday, noting that most Chinese users find "Opera" hard to pronounce or spell, and the new name allows the company to still use its 'O' logo.

"And [it works] because we're friendly. And from Europe," Lawson added.

Oupeng's news aggregation uses an Opera server cluster for processing and data mining microblog content, with machine intelligence used to rank and classify stories.

Lawson pointed out in a reply to a comment on the blog post that the Opera Mini server clusters it uses to help render pages for Oupeng are located in China, as required by local law. "That's hardwired into the product. The server farm is behind the Firewall," he wrote.

The browser also has UI customisations such as an exit button, and 27 'speed dial' webpage shortcuts rather than nine. The number of shortcuts can be increased to 63. "If you think typing on a virtual keyboard is a pain in English, try it with Chinese characters," Lawson wrote.

According to Lawson, Opera now has more than 130 million customers for its mobile browsers, and Telling Telecom, China's top phone distributor, shipped more than 30 million handsets last year.