Opera won't perform on Microsoft's phone

[korkus2000]

[news.com.com...]

Opera, which recently launched its Small-Screen Rendering technology designed to make it easy to read standard Web pages on "smart phones," last week said it would never offer a version for Microsoft-powered devices such as the Orange SPV.

[hakre]

as i remember correctly, opera can run on symbian os, which is handy with handy manufactures at the moment. so why to rely on m$ if you don't need to?

[Brett_Tabke]

It's not so much the phone that is an issue, but the handheld market in general. We know there is a convergence coming with all these handheld devices. It is only a matter of time before the phone, the pda, the camera, the gps, and other handheld gadgets are in one easy-to-use handheld package.

Microsoft is just getting geared up for this market and the hardware is just now coming up to a level of usability ms can work with. MS is at the same point with the handheld market that they were with Win 3.1 in 94. The hardware and software are coming together along with the MS marketing machine.

It doesn't take a degree in computer history to realize MS is going to do for handhelds what they did for word pros, spreadsheets, operating systems, and are doing with video.
MS will _own_ the handheld market within 3 years. Only those companies developing for that platform (pocketpc/phone) will be contenders.

Right now, the second tier handhelp browsers are NetFront and eventually Mozilla. Opera isn't even a consideration at this point and here they are saying they won't develop for PocketPC/Phone?

What's worse is you pick up a Nokia communicator with Opera running, and I can't even find the Opera name on it anywhere. It's like symbian co-opted Opera - no one knows about it, and consequently cares about it.

Opera doesn't need to be on WinCE devices - Opera needs to be on ALL devices. They can't afford to write off one-two devices here and there. By not developing a browser for PocketPC, they aren't hurting MS, they are only ceeding that market to them, and only hurting their own marketing efforts.