Opera has been having an eventful week. After announcing they would be transitioning to using Webkit on their browsers over Presta and that they had crossed 300 million monthly active users, they have announced that they are purchasing Skyfire Labs, the maker for the Skyfire browser. The acquisition is said to have cost $155 million and is likely in an attempt to improve Opera’s mobile browser experience.Skyfire is well known for its ability to view Flash content on iOS and Android by processing the content in the cloud. The browser has been around before Adobe announces Flash for Android and has helped iOS users bypass their lack of Flash support. SkyFire is also known for its mobile video optimization and its Rocket Optimizer which is similar to Opera Turbo and can reduce the size of streaming video and media by up to 60% on your device.
While we won't likely see the SkyFire browser after the acquisition is completed, we will see the benefits of the technology make their way to the new versions of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini.
The acquisition is expected to be finalized on March 15, 2013. Opera will pay $50 million up front and and the deal could end up being worth as much as $155 million in cash and stock for Skyfire Labs over the next three years.
source – Opera