ITS OPERA -- NOT OPRAH

location based services



I had the opportunity to sit down for a chat with Jon von Tetzchner, the CEO of Opera, when he was in Austin last week to speak at Mobile Monday. Jon’s an interesting guy with a lot of insight into the mobile Web, as you might expect. From talking to him, a few things about Opera became fairly clear: they’re big believers in the mobile Internet (duh), and this belief is rooted in the idea that there should be one internet for all types of users, using the same technologies to deliver specialized services to different platforms. The Opera message really seems to be one of simplicity, both for users and content providers.
For users, it’s pretty obvious — an Opera browser allows them to hit the sites their familiar with, at the usual address, “giving people what they want,” as von Tetzchner puts it. He sees no point in creating a mobile site a different, specific address, when users are already used to straightforward ones on the desktop (echoing my earlier comments about .mobi).
For content providers and operators, the theme of simplicity plays out in a few different ways. I’ve written before about how content providers can use Opera Mini to simplify mobile app development, something von Tetzchner was keen to stress. It can reduce the technical barriers to developing a mobile application, allowing designers to basically create a browser to access a standard site instead of having to code a standalone application from scratch. But with products like Opera Platform, the company also wants to extend this simplicity to the rest of the phone, allowing operators or third parties to essentially overtake the UI of a phone and customize it, while providing an environment in which to run internet-based applications. Not just for the sake of branding, but to open mobile development to a wider group of people with skills in standard Web technologies.
This could be particularly attractive to operators, who could create a common UI across their handset portfolio (as with other tools like Flash Lite or Qualcomm’s uiOne). Except the UI becomes more like the Web, where it can be easily changed and updated, and things like AJAX can be used to add new services and applications to it. There’s a lot of operator resistance to the idea that giving users a full HTML browser and turning them loose on the Web is a good idea, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that operators have done a great job at encouraging people to use the mobile web and mobile data services with their more closed strategies.
von Tetzchner is quick to point out that while operators might have to give up something in the short term, empowering users’ net access with a full browser and open service leaves them much more to gain in the long run — though it requires a fundamental change of view. “Instead of trying to lock people in, entice them to stay,” he says. Operators can offer services that make use of a full browser, whether on a subscription basis, or as a tool to fight churn. Directing mobile users out on to the internet doesn’t mean operators are suddenly out of the picture. They can offer different service plans to cater to different needs, as well as utilize existing infrastructure to provide services like third-party content billing.
Much of operators’ approach to the mobile Web has been predicated on a closed strategy, whether by blocking access outright to anything outside the portal, billing for it at ridiculous rates, or setting things up in such a way that they’re a necessary gatekeeper and technical expert for anybody that wants access to their customers. This strategy is outmoded and ill-advised; operators stand to gain far more by opening up, and allowing users to get what they want, and making it easier for content providers to give it to them. von Tetzchner and Opera’s contention is that this is best achieved by using standard web technologies rather than mobile-specific ones, allowing content providers to simply serve mobile users, and allowing those users access to everything they want. “People just want the internet,” he says, “not to look at it through a keyhole