Opera CEO, Jon von Tetzchner

Ordinary demands, extraordinary solutions

Thank you for celebrating our anniversary with us in April. This is an important milestone to mark the birth of the Opera browser. The Opera desktop browser was just the beginning, which eventually led to Opera's focus on bringing the Web to mobile devices. Since then we have continued to deliver innovative Web technology on any device. New Web-enabled devices such as TVs, media players, set-top boxes, picture frames and cars are now Opera powered. Going beyond devices, Opera aims to offer access to content in a variety of ways as well, such as with Opera Widgets.

Opera's vision to provide the best possible Internet experience on any device, coupled with the technology to make this possible, makes us an ideal partner to meet the individual challenges faced by operators worldwide. Opera is committed to creating new partnerships while strengthening existing ones by continuing to make future-proof, standards-based solutions that give freedom to operators in terms of what they can offer and how they offer it.

One of our partners, T-Mobile, started out using Opera Mobile, which led to implementing more Opera technology, such as Opera Mini. T-Mobile sought to offer their customers a mobile browser that provided full Internet content easily across a wide variety of handsets-in 2005, Opera Mini was selected as the perfect solution for T-Mobile's web'n'walk proposition. In less than a year, T-Mobile witnessed a significant increase in data volume and ARPU. Building on the success of web'n'walk and always innovating in the services it offered, T-Mobile has continued its partnership with Opera, with Opera Mini pre-installed on more than 50 devices. By choosing to implement our full Web solution on handsets, T-Mobile has managed to grow data revenues while reducing their costs for network hardware. This quarter we highlight the Opera relationship with T-Mobile with a case study about T-Mobile's Opera Widgets proposition.

“Opera is committed to creating new partnerships while strengthening existing ones by continuing to make future-proof, standards-based solutions that give freedom to operators in terms of what they can offer and how they offer it. ”

In looking toward the mobile future, we speak with a leading industry analyst, Andreas Constantinou of VisionMobile, about the mobile widget space and the future of widgets.

Always looking for innovation, valued Opera partners, such as T-Mobile, KDDI and Vodafone, have adopted cross-device, cross-platform Opera Widgets as an additional tool for allowing even faster and more convenient Web access. Widgets allow operators to differentiate their product offerings by providing personalized Web content. Widgets are a strategic way to increase revenue and customer loyalty and are in high demand from customers.

In this issue of Opera Insights, we focus on Opera's operator partnerships and the technology that propels these relationships forward and enhances operators' products and services. We also offer a sneak peek at the upcoming State of the Mobile Web report. Additionally, Opera Widgets Product Manager, Divisha Chandna, discusses how widget technology is going mass market with the introduction of operator-specific application stores, while Opera's Hans Tommerholt explains widget development tools, the Opera Widgets SDK and Opera's support for the developer community.

Enjoy the summer!

Jon von Tetzchner

Read more