14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that Opera intends to announce at the upcoming CTIA show in Las Vegas next month that it has made a deal with some U.S. cell phone operators, and that they will add Opera products onto new phone models. In addition, it seems that the carriers involved will be some of the biggest names in the country, namely Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint.
Opera's move towards dealing directly with carriers is driven by the idea that the U.S. carriers have a great influence on the mobile phone industry in the country, so it should be able to see its market share grow higher if it worked directly with operators and not mobile phone makers. At the same time, this move could allow the company to boost sales of its new OperaTurbo service, which is said to enable up to 80 percent of traffic on a network to be compressed due to optimizations and special servers.
Opera released the Beta version of Turbo last week and it is currently used for desktop browsing, though it should become available for the company's mobile products as well in the near future. Through the service carriers would see fewer traffic jams on their networks while also being able to offer their users a faster experience. Operators would also be able to collect ad revenues for themselves and for Opera.
The announcement that the Forbes magazine, citing a company's spokesperson, reports that Opera will make at CTIA might prove a reason to rejoice for a great number of users out there who are fond of using their mobile phones for browsing the Internet.
At the same time, Opera will have a new weapon in the battle for a browser leading position in the mobile phone market. Depending on the smartphone they own, users will decide whether the best browser available is mobile Safari, Google "Chrome Light," or Opera Mobile 9.5, which can be spotted on devices like HTC Diamond or Samsung Omnia. Currently, the company has deals with mobile phone makers like HTC, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung.