Bitstream secures pre-load deal with manufacturer for Bolt mobile browser

Bitstream Inc. is a software company responsible for one of the two major, independent mobile browsers. The main selling point of the Bolt browser is that it’s the mobile browser for any device. Bitstream has announced that the software will now come pre-loaded on every single mobile device from manufacturer Visual Fan.

Wait, who?

Visual Fan is a mobile device manufacturer in Romania, responsible for the Allview brand of handsets. Now, before you scoff, let me stress that is no small deal. Companies outside of the main market areas like the US and Wester Europe tend not to get much media exposure, but Visual Fan are something of a big deal. The company is massively popular in it’s home market, and sells devices all over Eastern Europe. The modus operandi of the manufacturer has been to concentrate on the best quality phones at the lowest price - a philosophy which has seen it become the fastest growing brand in its country. Not only that, but Romania is currently going through a kind of mobile renaissance at terrific speed.  During 2008 it saw the fastest year-over-year mobile penetration rates of any EU country, and has the seventh largest number of mobile subscribers in Europe.

Visual Fan didn’t just pick Bolt out of a hat, either. The company ran extensive tests to see which mobile browser would perform the best across it’s entire range of devices. It has declared that Bolt was the top performer both in terms of quality rendering and in speed.

From the release:

Adrian Visan, development manager at Visual Fan: “As an expanding company in Europe’s fastest growing mobile market it is crucial that we continue to differentiate Allview from competing brands, and having the best mobile browser helps set Allview apart… Our collaboration with Bitstream is sure to add utility and value to Allview phones.”

Anna Chagnon, president and CEO of Bitstream: ”Bitstream has been working on perfecting our mobile browsing technology for years, culminating in the beta test release of BOLT last February at Mobile World Congress. Downloaded more than 2 million times in 8 months, we continued to develop important features important to end users.  The result is that BOLT has evolved into the most fully-featured mobile browser, and an easy addition for handset manufacturers looking to offer their users the best possible Web experience.”

What we think?

Bolt has been growing at a pretty ferocious rate. Every couple of months it hits a new milestone. It can be easy to dismiss news from outside of the central mobile markets, but this is a massive win for Bitstream. It has gotten in on the ground level in the one of the most rapidly developing mobile markets in the world.