The adoption of web browsing on mobile devices has helped Opera Mini enjoy a successful first year in and out of the pockets of people around the world.
Users around the world have dropped Opera Mini onto their mobile devices around the world. Opera said in its notes on the first birthday of the product that the free browser has had an impact on the mobile marketplace.
“This is a celebration for our users,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Thanks to the more than 10 million people who use Opera Mini, we’ve changed the way users and mobile operators think about the mobile Web. Because of the tremendous grassroots support, Opera Mini is now a movement.”
It’s not just the people and the mobile providers who have noticed such interest. The major Internet players – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL, and Ask – all have efforts of varying complexity and strategy aimed at mobile users.
Opera recently made a move involving two of those companies. Until January, Opera had Google as its default search. They switched to Yahoo as the default at the end of the one-year agreement with Google, and said Yahoo had the best proposal “both on a commercial and strategic level.”
To mark the first year of Opera Mini’s availability, the company invoked the spirit of the ninja to celebrate. Their birthday card features a crimson-clad ninja freeing people from the walled garden of the telecoms to enjoy the wonders of the Internet.
A big selling point of Opera Mini has been its ability to deliver complete web pages to mobile devices. Opera said its users have viewed 3 billion cumulative pages through the Mini browser, and their servers deliver 300 complete web pages per second to them.
If you are in the United States reading this article, there’s a good chance you are using a Motorola RAZR V3, BlackBerry Pearl or BlackBerry 8700 as the hardware containing Opera Mini. In Europe, Sony Ericsson or Nokia devices will be more likely. You could win a bar bet by knowing Brunei Darrussalam has the world’s greatest penetration of Opera Mini users per capita.
That’s a ninjarific fact to know.
—
Tag:
Add to 
Bookmark Murdok: 
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
