The Second Act

at 3GSM 2004

I had the pleasure of joining my Oslo mates in Cannes this past week for the premiere business forum for the mobile industry- 3GSM. Over 25000 people and 600 exhibitors make this show a model of excellence in the industry and the premiere show to do business at. When you go to a booth to talk to someone at 3GSM, you talk to product managers, VP's, CTO's and sometimes CEO's. There are very few if any actors and models around the products. It's heavy on the substance and light on the, ahem, you know what I mean...

In all we were 8 from the Opera side and most of us shared a nice flat about 20 minutes seaside walk on La Croisette to the expo halls. The Oslo guys did a fantastic job setting up a very productive week of meetings, booth duty, demo's and networking. Basically, 8 people were booked from 9AM until 8PM every day and then dinner meetings and networking events kicked in until sometimes, the wee wee hours

Opera had the opportunity to have a stand at the "Intel Community" booth. It was in a pretty good location and we got significant traffic all four days. At the booth we demonstrated Opera and The Opera Platform for mobile operators on varius Symbian and Linux handsets, made presentations and bluetoothed the latest and greatest versions of series 60 and UIQ versions to happy Opera mobile users. Oh yeah, and I am personally proud of the fact that I converted a total of 4 Firefox users to Opera!! It was one of the tougher sells of the show for me, but those are always the best ones- especially when they are thanking you for it by email the next day.

I won't get into the exact companies we met but I will say that they were with companies of the highest caliber and clout in the mobile industry. Opera is garnering a tremendous amount of interest from a who's who of handset makers, Operators, system integrators and especially our competitors. We are in a very good position right now to push the envelope in the market and close some exciting design wins to help pave the way to 3G and full HTML Internet browsing on handsets. Frow what myself and my colleagues experienced at 3GSM, Opera clearly has the best technology right now and is well positioned to be a leading browser company in the mobile space. What we have been able to accomplish on the desktop platforms and all the great support we have received from Opera users throughout our history really sets us apart from any other browser contender IMO. You guys, our users, really do make the difference for Opera.

Opera's mobile organization is also really taking shape with some key hires. I am proud to say that we have assembled a very competent team on the sales and marketing, product management and development/ QA areas to make all of this happen for Opera and our customers & partners.

Well, after a week of eating lavish (and fatty) French food, getting very little sleep, and lots of airports and hotels, it's time to get back to some good fitness habits! Also, it's time to start planning another big splash for Opera at CTIA in Atlanta later in March.

We will be working very hard over the next weeks and months to nail some key handset and operator deals. Wish us all luck guys and gals. Spring is right around the corner and so is a very BIG series of HOT months for Opera. Christian and I are going to have to start cranking up the AC soon enough down here in Austin to cool us down.

Best Regards and a happy, safe weekend to all.

OperaSinger