Opera Software recently took out an ad on a billboard near Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, saying “Be a Real Internet explorer…Opera.com.” [Edit: maybe not. See comments below.] MocoNews reports that this is just the opening salvo as Opera prepares a “very aggressive” ad campaign promoting Opera’s mobile web browser. (If that doesn’t load, try the Washington Post mirror. It loads faster, but formatting’s a bit messed up.)

On the desktop, the “Browser Wars” may have settled into a detente between major players Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and Mozilla (Firefox), with Opera, Safari and others on the sidelines, but the mobile space is wide open.

Smartphones have been slowly climbing in processing power, and cellular networks have been getting faster, but it’s unquestionably the success of Apple’s iPhone that changed everyone’s expectations for the mobile web. Suddenly it’s no longer seen as a luxury, but a key feature for a phone to be able to display web pages — and more importantly, run web applications — as well as a desktop can.

Opera has long been a leader on mobile devices, first with Opera Mobile, then with the thin-client Opera Mini that can run on even low-end phones. WebKit has emerged as a major contender, powering the Safari web browser on the iPhone and iPod Touch, the default browser in Google’s Android operating system (currently on the T-Mobile G1, with more devices coming soon), and devices from Symbian and Palm. Mozilla is working on a compact version of Firefox code-named Fennec, and Microsoft is preparing to update the version of Internet Explorer that runs on Windows Mobile devices.

Since Opera Mobile and Opera Mini together already run on hundreds of devices, including those that run on Windows Mobile and Android, why the push? For one thing, only some of those phones come with Opera pre-installed. In most cases, Opera has to convince users to download the application. This is easy on a phone that only has a very basic built-in browser, but can run Java apps: There’s no contest between a WAP browser and Opera Mini! It’s a little harder when the phone comes with a full-featured browser like Safari or Internet Explorer.

The real question, though, is why target Microsoft in the mobile space? IE may be the dominant player on the desktop, but the up-and-comer among mobile browsers is clearly WebKit/Safari. Some likely reasons:

• Safari has a virtual lock on the iPhone, since the only browsers Apple allows on the iPhone Marketplace are other WebKit apps. (On the other hand, G1 users can easily find Opera Mini on the Android Marketplace.)
• Opera Mobile and Internet Explorer both run on Windows Mobile phones.
• Microsoft has a history of using their dominant position in one market to expand their presence in new markets.

This last point is the one that MocoNews fixes on. Given the way Microsoft has squashed such competitors as Netscape, WordPerfect and so on, it’s a good idea to go after IE Mobile before it has a chance to become entrenched.

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