With the release of Google Chrome and the continued popularity of Mozilla Firefox, the browser wars are seeing a bit of a renaissance. But as interesting as the renewed battle for the desktop may be, it’s important to remember that a similar battle for browser dominance – one that may affect even more people – is taking place on mobile handsets the world over.
Last month, we saw more news of the yet-to-be-released Firefox Mobile broswer – code named “Fennec” – surface with the release of Windows Mobile screenshots. Not to be outdone, Opera – the current mobile browser leader – has unveiled a beta of Opera Mini 4.2 – and it’s promising a faster browsing experience.
The latest version of Opera Mini offers improved video support for YouTube and other mobile video services, new skins, and improvements to Opera Link, its desktop synchronization feature. The most interesting feature, however, may not be what’s on the phone. It may be what’s on the ground: a new server park in the United States designed to improve Opera Mini performance worldwide.
“Opera Mini 4.2 can use our newly established server park in the US. This means significantly faster page downloads for our users in the Americas and Asia-Pacific region. Users in the rest of the world will also experience faster page downloads since we’ve reduced the load on our other servers.”
Just as intriguing are Opera Mini’s numbers. Opera is claiming 20 million users on the browser, which is up nearly 3 million users from the number they were reporting a quarter ago. That’s impressive growth by any standard.
Users interested in test-driving the new version can install Opera Mini 4.2 without overwriting the current version of Opera Mini on their handset. To download the beta preview, visit Opera Mini.
