Mini proves smart: Opera Mini™ Web browser for your BlackBerry™ or Treo™

Mini proves smart: Opera Mini™ Web browser for your BlackBerry™ or Treo™

Opera Software today announced that Opera Mini™, the free Web browser for mobile phones, is available for the popular BlackBerry™ and Palm® handsets. Opera Mini™ offers BlackBerry™ and Palm® Treo™ users a faster delivery of Web pages and overall better user experience.

According to Gartner reports*, 42.1 million PDA and smartphones units shipped globally in the first half of 2006. Millions of Blackberry™ and Palm® Treo™ business users have the opportunity to potentially increase productivity and decrease data traffic cost by downloading and using Opera Mini™ on their handsets. Opera Mini™ offers faster and better page rendering while saving on memory and data usage, which reflects as a healthier handset and smaller bill for those with limited data plans. Opera Mini™ achieves this via a server-based component that compresses Web pages, ultimately reducing the size of data transferred and associated costs.

“Opera Mini™ is a no-frills, instant gateway to the World Wide Web on today’s basic line of mobile phones,” says Rolf Assev, Chief Commercial Officer, Opera Software. “But we see folks in the industry who are thrilled to use it on higher-end devices. People who are accustomed to mobile browsing in addition to e-mailing or texting, enjoy the speed and reliability Opera Mini™ offers on today’s professional handsets. The fact is, it’s a choice available to everyone, novice or pro.”

Opera Mini™ launched in February this year and has since exceeded 1 billion pages viewed. There are currently more than 7 million users worldwide and industry leading operators, such as Europe’s T-Mobile, are already recognizing Opera Mini™ as a valuable service enabler by installing the browser on select handsets. Usage statistics reported by Opera in August revealed that Google search is the most popular .com site visited using Opera Mini™, followed by Gmail.com, Friendster.com, MySpace.com, Yahoo Messenger and hi5.com.

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