Samsung chooses Opera browser for phones

OPERA SOFTWARE has landed a major coup by signing an agreement with Samsung Electronics to provide Internet browsers for its mobile handsets.

This could prove to be a major blow for OpenWave which has provided WAP browsers for Samsung handsets in the past. Samsung may follow Nokia's example and load separate HTML and WAP browsers on its handsets.

Given that the announcement hasn't named any specific models from Samsung yet, it is difficult to tell whether or not OpenWave has lost out.

But it is a major triumph for Opera's 'Small-Screen Rendering' technology that enables mobile phones to access standard Internet sites. Pages are reformatted to fit the handset's actual screen width, thus eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling.

The deal is also another sign that mobile phone users want to use their handsets to access bog standard Internet sites - not just sites specifically engineered for mobile phones.

So this announcement is another blow for the proponents of the .mobi suffix intended to create a new generation of 'mobile aware' sites. µ

L'INQ
Opera