Opera Mobile 9.5 Adds Opera Widgets to Deliver a One-click Mobile Internet Experience
Opera Mobile 9.5 now introduces Opera Widgets to the mobile Internet experience, enabling one-click Web content access. This release marks the second Opera Mobile 9.5 beta for Windows Mobile and the first-ever beta for UIQ-based phones. A developer version of S60 Widget manager is also available within the Opera Widgets SDK.
T-Mobile has already embraced Opera Mobile with Widgets for their web n’walk initiative, as previously announced on September 18, 2008. Like T-Mobile, other operators can now incorporate Opera Widgets into their customer offering. This means that customer-selected Web content can be accessed from a list of icons on the home-screen. Widgets can also serve as a means of customer communication, as automatic notifications are now easier to instantly deliver to subscribers.
“Opera has built its second Opera Mobile 9.5 beta based on user-generated feedback following its first public release earlier this year,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “In addition to Opera Widgets, this new test version promises to be a smoother ride than the previous version, as we have improved page loading times and increased our focus on end-user productivity.”
Several Opera Widgets are now pre-installed in the Opera Mobile 9.5 beta builds. Additionally, Opera offers downloadable widgets at http://widgets.opera.com/.Opera always encourages more user-generated widgets and therefore recently updated its Opera Widget Software Development Kit (SDK). This SDK will enable developers to quickly and easily create widgets using standards-based Web technology.
The Opera Widgets SDK now includes two new features:
- Opera Dragonfly debugging tool - Develop faster with this tool for debugging JavaScript, inspecting Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the Document Object Model (DOM). Find your errors and get your widget right.
- Widget manager for on-device testing – Widget managers for S60, UIQ and Windows Mobile are included with in the SDK for testing widgets directly on the mobile phone.Opera is launching the updated SDK with a developer competition called the “X-Widget Challenge”.
Opera is offering $10.000 in cash prizes for the best cross-device widget submissions. Read more about the competition from http://my.opera.com/widgets.“Opera has kept developer needs at the heart of this beta release,” said Håkon Wium Lie, Chief Technology Officer, Opera Software.
“All great developers need great tools to work with. Opera is an industry leader in making the Web a developer-friendly place by constantly innovating within the confines of Web standards. We will continue to create with developers in mind, as we intend to continue to grow our developer toolkit with each consecutive release.”/PR
Touch Screens in Mobile Devices to Deliver $5 Billion Next Year
Touch screens have been available for some time and are found in a variety of fixed and portable devices, but it was the launch of Apple’s iPhone that refocused the public’s attention on them as never before. Shipments in 2007 of touch screen-based mobile devices increased 91% over 2006, and ABI Research forecasts that revenue from the global touch screen market for mobile phones and other handheld devices such as MIDs, UMPCs, and PNDs will reach $5 billion in 2009.
“Nearly all mobile handset manufacturers are getting into touch screens to a greater or lesser extent,” says research director Kevin Burden. “The acceptance of touch screens to date has varied by geographic region, which has been a significant factor in determining the success of individual handset vendors.”
Samsung and Motorola have been the most successful, commanding 33% and 30% shares of the touch screen mobile phone market respectively. “Samsung and Motorola lead the market for touch screen phones primarily because of their scale and significant presence in the Asian markets,” says Burden. “Because it’s difficult to represent even a fraction of the common Asian characters on a QWERTY-style keyboard, touch screen devices on which characters can be written with a stylus are immensely popular. The Asia/Pacific market consumed more than 80% of the world’s touch screen-based mobile phone production over the past year.”
At 24% Sony Ericsson has the third-largest market share, while all the other handset vendors – including Apple – are essentially niche players.
A number of factors are driving further adoption of touch screen-based mobile devices. Consumers are looking for more intuitive user interfaces and personalization options as device functionality increases. Also, prices for touch components and panels continue to decrease and are falling on an average of nearly 10% per annum. [ABI Research]
NVIDIA and Opera Team to Accelerate the Full Web on Mobile Devices
Opera 9.5 browser licensed and optimized for Tegra processors
Browsing the Internet on a mobile device will take a leap forward with today's announcement that NVIDIA Corporation and Opera Software are collaborating to bring the full desktop Web-browsing experience, including support for JavaScript, accelerated vector, and video content, to smartphones and mobile Internet devices.
As a result, NVIDIA will offer an optimized Opera 9.5 browser in its suite of pre-integrated, in-house and third-party software for the NVIDIA® Tegra family of computer-on-chip Windows Mobile and Windows CE solutions."Seamless, effortless Internet access is critical to any state-of-the-art connected mobile device, and the combination of Opera 9.5 and NVIDIA Tegra will deliver the full Web experience into the palm of your hand," said Neil Trevett, vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA.
"Opera and NVIDIA are cooperating to create a powerful browsing experience that will truly make the Internet an integral part of the advanced Tegra mobile visual computing experience.""Full Web browsing is a key feature for mobile phones and mobile Internet devices today. End users are demanding a mobile-browsing experience that mirrors that of their home and work computers," says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software.
"Opera 9.5 combined with NVIDIA Tegra will deliver a powerful and visual browsing experience for the next generation of smartphones and mobile Internet devices."The Tegra family of computer-on-chip solutions integrates high-performance ARM CPUs, extensive media acceleration and integrated GeForce GPUs that enable Opera 9.5 to provide mobile users a compelling browsing experience with the following features:
Support for full desktop Web content with hardware-accelerated rich media, image and in-page video playback;GPU acceleration delivering a smooth, highly-interactive panning and zooming browsing experience with significantly-reduced battery consumption;
Hardware-accelerated 3D touch browsing experience with Opera integration into NVIDIA's OpenKODE-based composition framework using the power of OpenGL ES 2.0.Devices with the Opera browser powered by NVIDIA Tegra hardware are expected to be available to consumers in 2009. /PR
“No Comfort Zone” for Mobile Device Vendors in the Future
Mobile devices are the biggest-selling consumer electronics products in the world, with more than one billion shipping every year. However, the market is in a state of rapid flux. “Three or four years from now, no mobile device vendor – no matter what their market position today – will be in a ‘comfort zone’,” says ABI Research vice president and research director Stuart Carlaw, in a new webcast available on the firm’s website.
Developed and developing markets for these devices are being shaped by divergent forces. Developed markets in particular are typically highly saturated, highly competitive and highly segmented, with strong product innovation.
Carlaw adds, “The advent of wider mobile broadband access, the drive to maximize data revenue, the desire to push smartphone operating systems down into mid-tier handsets, and rapid innovations in user interfaces will all make the mobile devices of 2010 radically unlike those of today.”
As the technologies evolve and market trends emerge, we will see the user interface advances pioneered by Apple’s iPhone continue, with wider use of accelerometers and the addition of haptic feedback to touchscreens. Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) will become an important market segment, and vendors will increasingly look to diversify their product and service offerings.
“The mobile device market is expanding, not consolidating,” notes Carlaw, “and shows increasing micro-segmentation. Disruptive influences abound.”
In an illustrated audio webcast available on ABI Research’s website, Carlaw delves into the trends that will determine the mobile device market’s future shape and direction, including a feature set explosion, the effort to drive "smart" operating systems into the mid-tier, and specialization in handsets’ basic designs.
He examines the impact of mobile broadband and of advanced user interfaces. He concludes by highlighting the future importance of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and the trend for vendors to diversify their business models. [ABI Research]
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