My old buddy Phillip Gronvold, who works at the Opera office in the US, demonstrated Opera Mini on the new Google Android phone to digi.no.

Watch the video (only the very beginning is in Norwegian, the rest is in English)

(Via ChooseOpera)

Related: The story behind Opera Mini on Google Android

Opera Software today released Opera Mini 4.2, the newest version of Java based mobile web browser that works on almost all mobile phones.

New features in Opera Mini 4.2:

• Skins.
• 24 new languages.
• Synchronize, edit and delete notes via Opera Link.
• Better handling of RTSP, enabling more users to watch video.
• Opera Mini users in the US can now experience 30% speed improvements due to the addition of an Opera Mini server park in the US.

Opera Mini is now official availability on the latest version of the Android mobile platform. Opera Mini is the first alternative browser on Android. Users of Android-powered mobile phones can now download a beta version of Opera Mini 4.2

Feel visual power demonstration of Opera Mini on YouTube. Opera Mini Cartoons demonstrates a few “real life” scenarios where Opera Mini comes in handy.

Download Opera Mini 4.2 and Digg!

Opera Software released the first beta of Opera Mini 4.2.

New features:

• Synchronize, edit and delete notes via Opera Link.
• 24 new languages.
• Better handling of RTSP, enabling more users to watch video.
• Skins are back (along with new skins).
• “Accept” link at the end of the EULA (for BlackBerry users).

Opera Mini users in the US and Asia-Pacific region can now experience faster speed, due to the addition of an Opera Mini server park in the US.

Known issues:

• Some of the new languages are not fully translated for the beta, but will be fully supported for the final version.
• There are several issues with notes in Opera Link. Your device may not support viewing or editing of very large notes. Backup your notes before trying.

Download Opera Mini 4.2 beta

From The New York Times BITS blog,

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

There is a hot discussion going on about this in OSNews site.

[via Choose Opera]

The Marriott is now recommending visitors to its mobile website to download and use the Opera Mini browser. Nice!

(Via: WapReview.com)

Opera Mini’s usage statistics for the First Quarter of 2008 are in and they look promising!

Opera’s first “State of the Mobile Web” report is broken down into several sections, one of which covers “Top Trends”. According to the report, social networking sites claim nearly 40% of all traffic worldwide!

In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.

Since the birth of Opera Mini in 2005 and the public release in January of 2006, Opera Mini’s user base has grown to over 44 million users worldwide and continues to grow strong. This incredible growth means that the number of Opera Mini users have increased 26% since the last quarter in 2007!

Opera Mini cumulative users per month

With over 2.4 billion page views in March alone, Opera Mini users consumed more than 33 million MB of data! That’s a 57% increase in page views and almost an 88% increase in data transferred when compared to the last quarter of 2007!

Pages transcoded by Opera Mini per month (left) and total data consumed per month in MB (right).

Content Preferences

By examining aggregate numbers, we are able to paint a picture of the types of sites and services that win on the mobile Web. Tracking the type of content across the top 100 sites visited by all Opera Mini users, we find:

• Social networking is popular worldwide and is the leading source of Web traffic for mobile devices.
• Successful sites on the Web find users on mobile phones, further underscoring the emergence of One Web.
• Consumers desire a rich Web experience regardless of the device they use to access the Web. WAP continues to diminish as more-capable Web browsers are able to display full Web content on mobile phones.
• Nearly a quarter of all traffic is headed to content portals or search engines.

For a complete break down of the top 10 countries and top 10 most visited sites per country, navigate over to the State of the Mobile Web: First Quarter, 2008 report!

Top 10 sites in the U.S.

1. www.myspace.com
2. www.google.com
3. www.mocospace.com
4. www.yahoo.com
5. www.facebook.com
6. www.live.com
7. www.hi5.com
8. www.wikipedia.org
9. www.itsmy.com
10. www.ebay.com

Countries achieving the top 10 list include: Russia, Indonesia, China, United States, India, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Germany and Poland.

Opera Software today released Opera Mini 4.1, the newest version of Java based Opera web browser that works with nearly all mobile phones.

Opera Mini 4.1 introduces the following new features:

• Opera Mini 4.1 is up to 50% faster than Opera Mini 4.0
• URL completion auto-suggest, making address input easy and intuitive
• Web pages can be saved for later off-line viewing
• New quick find feature for words and phrases (similar to Ctrl+F function in desktop browsers)
• Images, ringtones and other content can be downloaded without leaving Opera Mini

This is, of course, in addition to already useful features such as Opera Link, file upload, custom searches, and more.

According to Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software, Opera Mini boasts 44 million users worldwide. Take the guided tour and become user 44,000,001 today!

Download Opera Mini 4.1:
http://www.operamini.com/download/

The Opera Mini team is set to release its first major update to the popular Opera Mini 4 browser. The update, Opera Mini 4.1, is due out this week.

Opera Mini 4.1 adds the following new functionality:

• Ability to search for text within a webpage
• URL suggestions based on bookmarks and browsing history
• Ability to download files directly to the phone (only on phones with JSR-75 support)
• Ability to save webpages for offline use (only on phones with JSR-75 support)

A beta version of Opera Mini 4.1 has been out since early April.

Today we had another first for Opera Mini. Helio became to first mobile provider in the United States (US) to deploy Opera Mini on their mobile phones.

Not long ago, Helio users got together and hacked the Helio Ocean phone to make it work with Opera Mini. It was a hit. Helio, the company, listened to their users and are now officially deploying Opera Mini.

Now that is something I would like and expect from mine and other mobile carriers/operators. Listen to your users, and give them the full Web on a normal browser.

Download Opera Mini on your Helio Ocean by dialing “67372″ (OPERA).

Opera Mini on the Helio Ocean

Your Start page on Opera Mini should look like this today, after we switched back to Google as the default search engine.

Now start googling like there’s no tomorrow!

(The Start page on Opera Mini)

(Note: This screenshot was taken using the Opera Mini simulator)

The graph below shows the amazing story of Opera Mini. In January of 2008, Opera Mini users browsed more than 1.8 billion webpages. And as I said before, the mobile Web is alive and kicking.

Since being released two years ago, Opera Mini has grown into the browser of choice for the Web on mobile phones.

With more than 100,000 daily downloads of Opera Mini, I certainly expect this figure to skyrocket over the coming months.

(Monthly page views on Opera Mini)

So how popular is Opera Mini? Do people really browse the Web on their mobile phones?

1.7 billion webpages
Well, last month alone Opera Mini users browsed a staggering 1.7 billion webpages. Rest assured, the mobile Web is alive and kicking.

How many Opera Mini servers are required to process these 1.7 billion pages? That’s some serious cloud computing there.

100,000 downloads each day
The number of Opera Mini users keeps on climbing. Every day, more than 100,000 people download Opera Mini onto their phones.

Opera Mini, the little browser that could.

Good news for all of you Google fans (and that includes me). We’re switching back to Google Search as the default search engine on the start pages of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile!

In early 2007 we signed a deal with Yahoo OneSearch for them to be the default search engine on Opera Mini. At that time, many Opera Mini users openly complained about the switch away from Google Search. To be honest, I myself wasn’t happy with the move either.

Yahoo OneSearch was at one point supposed to be the future of ‘local’ Web searching on mobile phones. For a short while I got onto their bandwagon and was optimistic about Yahoo’s future.

Using Yahoo Search on my Opera Mini wasn’t always a positive experience. I found their results page very confusing and generally unhelpful. Until today I don’t understand how Yahoo decides to categorize the results into their three categories: ‘Web’, ‘Mobile Web’ and ‘All results.’ If you’ve used Yahoo OneSearch, you probably know what I’m referring to.

Google, on the other hand, is… well… Google. I don’t need to say much about Google and the relevancy of their search results.

Even with Yahoo being the default search engine on Opera Mini, I wasn’t too far away from Google.

In fact, a neat feature of Opera Mini allows you to add your own choice of search engines to the start page. Google Search has been on my Opera Mini start page ever since we added this feature in Opera Mini 4.

The switchover to Google Search will take place on March 1st. Since Opera Mini works with a server on the backend, existing users would also be affected by this change.

Now get yourself Opera Mini (if you don’t have one yet) and start googling again! What are you waiting for?

Tip: Add your search engine of choice to the Opera Mini start page
Just like in Opera for your computer, you can create your own web search from any search field on the Web using Opera Mini 4. Simply click on the search field in the web page and then choose “Create search” from the Menu.

As I blogged earlier, we teamed up with MINI Spain to jointly promote Opera Mini and the MINI Clubman in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The all-red Opera Mini MINIs traveled in pack formation around Barcelona reminiscent of the famous MINI car scene in the film The Italian Job.

Below are some photos and video of these Opera Mini MINIs.

Back in December a crew from the BBC was over at Opera headquarters in Oslo to film a piece on the topic of the mobile Web. It aired yesterday on the BBC Click program.

Video of the show featuring Opera Mini can be found on BBC Click site.

Ofir Leitner, who works for a mobile content startup, beautifully wrote about the issues and difficulties with developing and deploying applications for mobile phones in the United States (US).

Many of the issues we face with getting Opera Mini to work with all operators (carriers) are mentioned in his blog post. The mobile industry is very different than that of the PC.

This should give you a bit of a taste of the hard work the Opera Mini team faces.