Opera hits another high note

Opera, 'the fastest browser on earth', has pulled off its second coup of the month as mobile appliance software consortium Symbian has picked it for a browser.

Two weeks ago, IBM chose Opera for its QNX Net appliance.

Mat Hanrahan, senior analyst at Bloor Research, said: "This will fit in on the smart phone/PDA level of net appliances. But at the end of the day, the browser is irrelevant - it's what services it can deliver that will sell it, first to the business users.

"It will be up to the carriers to sell what the devices can do when the service is there for them to use."

Symbian will be putting its own front end on the 2Mb browser that Opera developed for Psion's EPOC OS. The consortium has chosen Nokia's WAP browser for its low-end pure mobile phone devices.

Opera has 2.5 million desktop users worldwide, recruited by word of mouth.