In June this year, the Portuguese telecom operator Optimus  launched their own branded version of Opera's Smartphone Edition on their Nokia 3650 phones. The preliminary results are now in, proving Optimus' hunch correct. Data shows users loving Opera on their phones, and data traffic sharply rising.

From May to August GPRS data traffic on Optimus' network increased a whopping 416%.

Considering that Opera is merely on a small number of Optimus' phones, subscribers with Opera on their phones generate thousands of percent more data traffic than subscribers without Opera's full Internet experience.

"Already just three months from deployment we clearly see that the combination of launching Opera has been an unconditional success," says Miguel Almeida, Optimus Marketing and Sales Executive Administrator. "Opera´s Web browser has contributed significantly to this huge increase in GPRS traffic. Feedback from our users has also been extremely positive. Subscribers are surprised that they can access the same Internet they are used to from their PCs on their mobile phone, and that it's just as easy to use."

Excited about Opera's breakthrough Small-Screen Rendering (SSR) technology, other operators in Europe, the US and Asia will in the next few months launch customized, operator-branded Opera browsers on their phones. SSR technology has made the full Web available on smaller smartphones for the first time. Before Opera introduced SSR, mobile phone users were restricted to use stripped down WAP browsers based on XHTML for which there is not much content available. SSR massages HTML Web pages to fit on a smaller screen, eliminating horizontal scrolling, making the full Web useful on small screens for the first time.

"The data proves what I said in June, that dynamic companies like Optimus will shape the mobile industry in the years to come. Optimus dared to be the first operator to take the plunge with us," says Rolf Assev, Executive Vice President Marketing and Strategic Alliances, Opera Software. "Now other operators are also getting ready to deploy Opera on their phones, immediately benefiting subscriber satisfaction and simultanenously increasing average revenue per user."