Opera Max signs up three new OEMs, eyes 100 million installs by 2017

The Opera Max data compression software has become a useful feature packed into some of this year’s lower cost smartphones and Opera has today declared that the company has partnerships with a total of 14 Android handset manufacturers.

We have already seen Opera Max appear in recent handsets from Samsung and Xiaomi, among others, and Opera has just announced three new partners: Acer, Hisense and TWZ. This means that additional handsets with compression support pre-installed should be heading our way soon. As a result, Opera expects that its software will be installed on more than 100 million Android phones by the year 2017.

Opera boasts that its software can save on as much as 50 percent of a user’s data consumption for general browsing, while specific services from the likes of YouTube and Netflix can reach up to a 60 percent saving. If you’re curious about how the system works, Opera Max acts as a server that intercepts unencrypted data traffic, routing it through Opera’s servers where bandwidth-saving compression is applied to images and video, along with website loading optimizations. See the video below for more details.

While not really useful for those with unlimited, high-speed data connections, Opera Max can help consumers with limited data squeeze the most out of their plan, while those with questionable connections can also benefit from lighter, faster loading web pages and videos.

Keep your eyes out for more devices with Opera Max support out of the box in the near future.