Cricbuzz, Opera Software extend association

Cricbuzz.com has extended its ties with Opera Software until 2013, owing to the huge traffic received from Opera Mini users in India.

Opera Software had teamed up with Cricbuzz in June 2011 to provide its users live scores of the India-England cricket series, along with a host of other cricket features through a start-page link campaign, a text-based banner on the Opera Mini home page. This allowed Opera Mini cricket fans to get one-click access to live cricket scores, ball-by-ball commentary, cricket news, highlights, schedules, archives, picture galleries and more.

Opera Mini’s Speed Dial provides users with quick access to their most used links and bookmarks from the second the browser is opened. For this campaign, the Opera Mini Speed Dial included the home page link to Cricbuzz.com.

Cricbuzz’s six-week campaign using the Opera Mini link had a massive impact on the former’s mobile traffic. Cricbuzz.com is today the second largest cricket portal on the Web and the largest on mobile, as well as the fastest growing one.

“Our presence on Opera Mini’s Speed Dial has helped in reaching out to the young mobile users in India. The increase in traffic to our mobile properties is a testimony to this successful partnership. We are very happy to extend our partnership with one of the most popular players in the mobile browser category and hope this further helps in delivering information on cricket to more fans,” said Pankaj Chhaparwal, CEO, Cricbuzz.com.

Sunil Kamath, Sales Director for India & SAARC, Opera Software, added here, “Our association with Cricbuzz clearly demonstrates the value we bring to not just our partners but our users as well. Opera Mini is the most widely used mobile web browser in India. It provides a gateway that helps organisations reach a majority of mobile Web users.”

Opera Mini claims to have more than 144 million users each month and growing. It offers cloud-assisted browsing, where its compression technology reduces data load by up to 90 per cent, before sending it to phones. This results in a much faster page-loading speed on a limited bandwidth connection, as well as lower data costs. Mobile users can download Opera Mini for free from m.opera.com.