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Opera announced its mobile browser, Opera Mini, has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the Apple App Store and will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on the market. Some of Opera Mini’s features include Speed Dial, which gives users the ability to reach their favorite sites with one tap, an address field with auto-completion, tabs to allow multitasking across several Web pages and bookmarks.
Opera Mini boasts more than 50 million users worldwide and enables fast mobile Web browsing by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the device. The company said users of the application would notice an uptake in speed, especially on slower networks such as the 2G Edge network, and also save money because of its data compression capabilities. “We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini App,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”
Opera has been disseminating Opera Mini to as many smartphone platforms as possible, including Google Android and Windows Mobile, as it attempts to preserve and maybe grow its market share in the mobile-browser arena. On March 11, Opera released a beta of Opera Mini 5 for Google Android, a week after the company announced that it would release the same application for Windows Mobile 5.x and 6.x smartphones. According to analytics company StatCounter, Opera Mini is currently the most-used smartphone browser, with 24.6 percent of the market, in contrast to Apple’s Safari browser for the iPhone with 22.3 percent. If both the iPhone and the iPod Touch are included in those calculations, Apple’s share rises to 37.2 percent.
Earlier this week the company announced its worldwide user base surpassed 100 million users-50 million who downloaded the desktop version and the previously mentioned 50 million Opera Mini mobile users. Year-on-year growth for Opera browser on desktop now stands at over 30 percent, measured from March 2009 to March 2010. The number of desktop users was measured during March 2010. Boilesen pointed out many more Opera users can be found browsing the Web on their game consoles, connected TVs and set-top boxes.
Our focus on speed, security, innovation and usability continues to yield results. We always listen to the needs and wants of our users, and they reward us by choosing Opera,” said Jon von Tetzchner, co-founder of Opera Software, who noted Opera’s record growth on desktop was achieved following the launch of the Opera 10.5x generation. He said Opera has now firmly secured its position as the world’s fastest browser, with its JavaScript engine boasting speeds greater than seven times its predecessor Opera 10.10.