The Second Act

with the Opera mobile browser of course...

and if you are lucky enough to own a Symbian phone, that's probably the case today. Opera has pretty bold plans when it comes to the mobile side:

There are currently a billion people out there in the world using some flavor of mobile handset. That's more than the amount of people with desktop Internet connections!!

In the US, there are roughly 150 million subscribers of cellular phone service.

Opera wants to be on every single one of these phones.
for good reason...
We intend on giving mobile phone users the same powerful and recognizable Internet experience that they have come to know and enjoy in their desktop lives.

Opera has gained quite a bit of experience over the years, rendering the 6 billion (and change) pages that exist on the web today. It's taken 10 years of hard work, close to 100 talented software engineers and testers,scores of Elektrans, thousands and thousands of dedicated users and some crafty marketing deals of course to give Opera the oportunity to deliver the very best mobile browsing experience possible.

Many thought WAP was the answer- strike 1
others jumped up and down about WAP2- strike 2
the latest trend is lauding walled garden-like content channels- a big strike 3

It always come back to delivering the ONE and ONLY Internet on mobile phones. And that's where Opera hits a homerun IMO. Web authors are already overworked and underpaid- the last thing they should be tasked to do is to create a desktop version and a mobile version (for each mobile platform and screen size I might add) and worst yet have to support both going forward.

Opera does this on the fly and does it well. On my 6600- I buy stuff, I pay bills, I wow people at cocktail parties, and I always have access to the ONE Internet in a 100% advertising- free environment I might add (shhhhh:)

My overall point here is that we all have a tremendous opportunity right now. Together, the Opera nation has the ability to shape how the Internet is accessed on a mobile handset. Believe me, the Operators don't know how to do it. Nokia comes to us for it. Microsoft, sure as Heck does not know how to do it.

Opera is leading the way here. All others are either copying (sorry Access), planning ultimate doom for us all (sorry Microsoft) or confusing the &$^$ out of the Operators (I won't name names here, but basically everyone else).

Just good old fashioned web standards, the same high performance rendering engine that people know and love from Opera and envelope-pushing mobile browsing innovations that keep proving that mobile browsing is just as viable as from any other device.

OK, what is my *other* overall point here??

It's you (and me) the end user that will ultimately decide how we browse on mobile phones. After all, we are the ones that will buy stuff, use web services, and spend our valauble time squinting into that 170-something by 220-something pixel screen and pecking away at those tiny keys.

I challenge every one of Opera's users to send an SMS or scribble on your monthly bill receipt to your local operator and politely ask them to "Give me the Opera browser on my handset!" or something like that

Trust me on this guys, help us and help yourself by defining the way mobile browsing will take place on your handset before Operators take a -stab- at doing that for you and they will- just like AOL put us all through the wringer a decade ago.

Operators are scared to death that they will lose you to their competition. They will listen to you and they will give you whatever will keep you in their network and keep revenue flowing into their coffers.

So there is a way to keep Microsoft out of our lives on the mobile side and keep choice, open standards, software innovation and the best possible Intenret experience in our handsets.

Please do ASK YOUR OPERATOR TODAY FOR THE BEST MOBILE BROWSER-------> OPERA!!

Happy Easter all.

Os