The Opera browser has become even more popular since all the bad press about how insecure Internet Explorer is. If the Opera desktop browser is red hot, the Opera Mobile browser is white hot. Earlier this week, Opera Software announced its one millionth download of Opera Mobile from www.opera.com. This is in addition to the many more copies that have been downloaded from business partner and other download sites around the world. Opera is revolutionizing the Web browsing experience on mobile phones. I have to admit that prior to using Opera I was not a fan of surfing the web on the Handspring Treo 600. After getting the Sony Ericsson P900, which comes with Opera pre-loaded, my attitude changed completely. I showed the browser to a number of people at DemoMobile, and to a person, they were quite impressed.
The reasons the Opera browser makes such a big difference are twofold. One is that it supports Internet standards including CSS. The other is SSR (Small-Screen Rendering), the technology that displays Web pages in a way that is entirely customized to best suit a handheld device’s screen size and resolution. The Opera browser is very popular in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Recent deals made with Motorola and Qualcomm and the announcement by Opera that it is porting to the Microsoft smartphone platform will make Opera much more available in North America.

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