Chinese Group Bids $1.2 Billion for Opera Web Browser

A group of Chinese investors announced on Wednesday that it had offered $1.2 billion to acquire the Norwegian company behind the Opera Web browser.

The consortium is led by Golden Brick Silk Road Fund Management of China and includes Yonglian Investment, an affiliate of Golden Brick Silk Road Fund Management, mobile game maker Beijing Kunlun Tech, and antivirus and search provider Qihoo 360, according to a report from The New York Times.

The group has offered Opera Software, the browser's parent company, 71 Norwegian kroner ($8.31) a share, a premium of about 56 percent, based on the average share price over the past 30 days, the report said.

Opera said the agreement would give the browser access to Kunlun and Qihoo's Internet users in China, as well as funding. In turn, Kunlun and Qihoo will be able to sell their products to Opera users and use its mobile advertising platform.

Qihoo, which runs its own mobile browser, could combine with Opera's and benefit from the company's advertising network, while Kunlun could use Opera's apps to expand the distribution of its games, said The New York Times.

Opera's board has unanimously decided to recommend that shareholders accept the offer, although the deal remains conditional on Kunlun's getting approval at its general meeting in March to participate in the consortium, the report added.

The offer is among the latest attempts by Chinese tech firms to expand overseas. One of the partners of the Opera bid, Kunlun Tech, recently acquired a 60-percent stake in Grindr, valuing the social networking app for gay men at $155 million. Chinese Web giants Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings have also made purchases outside the mainland to expand their reach.

If successful, the deal would give the Chinese group a brand struggling to compete with Google's Chrome and other browsers but remains a favored pick in developing countries.

Developed in the 1990s, the Opera browser set itself apart from competitors as a browser designed for use with mobile phones that used compression technology to boost download times. But the competition has caught up, with Opera relegated as the sixth most-used browser--with a 5.5-percent market share--behind Chrome, Apple's Safari, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Alibaba's UCWeb, according to the Internet metrics service provider StatCounter.

In August last year, Opera said it was undergoing a strategic review following annual losses over the previous two years.