Author: Robin Wauters

We had a brief chat with Opera Software product analyst Phillip Grønvold here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday. We had a conversation about the company’s plans to submit an Opera Mini iPhone app up for App Store approval, of which we posted the video interview yesterday.

Another thing we touched upon was the recently announced plans to provide handset manufacturers with a toolkit to get the company’s Opera Mobile product preloaded on Android devices. Grønvold demoed the app running on Google’s Nexus One phone, and we recorded the video of the app in action, embedded above.

Note: again, this isn’t a consumer product, but an OEM offering. Opera Software says it works closely with many manufacturers around the world and hopes to get Android handsets with Opera Mobile pre-installed into the hands of consumers by the end of this year.

The company also points out you can download its lightweight mobile browser, Opera Mini, from Android Market today (we also know Opera is working on getting Opera Mini 5 in the store ’soon’).

We had a brief chat with Opera Software product analyst Phillip Grønvold here at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday. We inquired about the company’s plans to submit an Opera Mini application for the iPhone / iPod touch in the near future, and also got a hands-on demo of the app in action. Unfortunately, Grønvold was unwilling to demo the app on video, but take our word for it: the browser really is very, very fast.

Grønvold also declined to provide an ETA for the submission of the app to the App Store, but said it is very close to completion so it shouldn’t take too long.

A lot of people are – justifiably – skeptical about the chances of Opera Mini for iPhone actually making it to the App Store, but we can tell from our conversations with the people from Opera that this isn’t a publicity stunt, and that the company went to great lengths to ensure that they fully comply with Apple’s strict policies.

It’ll be interesting to see when Opera sees the app fit enough to be shown off publicly, and when it will be submitting the app. Once it does, the ball will be in Apple’s court, and a lot of people will be watching over its shoulders.

Do you think you’ll ever be able to download Opera Mini for iPhone from the App Store, or is there no chance in hell?

Mobile marketing solutions provider MADS has partnered with Netbiscuits, which offers a B2B web software platform for the creation, publication, and monetization of mobile websites.

In essence, MADS’ mobile marketing platform will be integrated with Netbiscuits mobile website publishing platform, which enables the latter’s publishers to monetize their sites utilizing mobile ad campaigns via the MADS network, which self-reportedly includes over 20 global ad sales agencies.

Opera is set to unveil Opera Mini for iPhone in a press and partner preview during the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, the Norwegian browser software company said in a statement released earlier today. In addition, the company will be introducing a slew of other Opera-powered devices at its exhibit at MWC.

Small caveat: Opera has yet to submit the iPhone app for approval in the App Store.

I’m starting to suspect people like free stuff – a shocker, I know.

Nokia says the new version of Ovi Maps that includes free walk and drive navigation has been downloaded over 1.4 million times since its introduction on 21 January 2010.

Nokia says the 1 million mark was reached after just one week following the launch, and the company’s Executive VP Anssi Vanjoki adds that they’re currently seeing ‘a download a second, 24 hours a day’.

To be honest, I don’t really care which is the better smartphone (or super-duper phone): the iPhone 3GS, the Motorola Droid, HTC’s Droid Eris, Google’s Nexus One, Nokia’s N900 or the Palm Pre.

It’s just great to witness this seemingly never-ending advancements in mobile technology, both on a hardware and software level, and to see increased competition drive innovation at such rapid pace. Just compare the market today to five years ago, and you can’t help but be amazed by how far we’ve come – I still remember my epic struggles to get my previous phone (HTC S710 with Windows Mobile) to do half of what I really wanted it to.

In short: if all phone manufacturers keep on pumping out better phones, I’m a happy camper (for the record: I’m still very pleased with my iPhone 3GS as my primary device).

But comparisons will be comparisons, and MOTO Development Group this morning announced the results of its DIY touchscreen analysis, based on some touchy testing of the capacitive screens of the Nexus One, the iPhone, the Motorola Droid and HTC’s Droid Eris.

We’re rolling two separate announcements into one post, if you don’t mind.

Fandango this morning announced the official release of its free app for the Android platform, enabling owners of Google’s Nexus One and other devices that run Android to check out movies showtimes and more on the go. The news comes a couple of weeks after the company put out a beta release of the Android app.

Mobile movie fans can use the app to find movies playing nearby by using Android’s GPS feature and connect straight to Google Maps for driving directions to the theatres, watch trailers, view fan ratings and buy tickets for more than 16,000 movie screens. Fandango is waiving the service fee for tickets purchased through the app from now until March 7, 2010.

Translation and dictionary software maker Babylon, on the other hand, has today released its application for BlackBerry. At least, we’ll take their word for it, since we couldn’t find it in the App World catalog yet.

Conceivably, it’s only offering the application to large-volume Babylon-Enterprise corporate customers who will now be able to host Babylon’s dictionary application locally on their own BB smartphones.

Babylon says it is currently in the process of developing an application for the private sector as well, and expects it to be available within a few months.

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