Opera boss orchestrates the handheld web

"With Opera Mini, we are compressing data so you can have a good experience even on a mobile data connection - it uses our servers to compress and render. We have a very big server room - server rooms would be more accurate.

"I don't see our need for servers changing in the future. If the network is fast enough they can use Opera Mobile because it can do more, but even normal 3G isn't all that fast - and most people are still using GPRS.

"The point is we are always trying to offer a better user experience. We want to get the Internet into the hand of everybody, including poor people in poor countries."

Information wants to be free

To make all of this free to the user, Opera's had to develop other revenue streams. Its early desktop browsers were a bit like shareware - either you used it free and put up with some adverts, or you paid a modest licence fee for a clean version.

However, its rivals - Internet Explorer and Firefox - were free to use and eventually Opera had to follow suit.

"In 2005, we made the decision to go free on the desktop - our revenue now is we get paid from the search bar," Tetzchner says.

"Mini is a free version, we are doing deals with content owners. We do let users change it, so we could lose revenue [if they move away from the paid-for content], but we want to have a good product for users."

Tetzchner claims not to be worried by the competition, even though Opera seems destined to always be number three - years ago it was behind IE and Netscape Navigator, and now it's behind IE and Firefox.

"I still see huge opportunities on the desktop - the fact that Firefox has got so many users shows the potential," he argues. "There are countries where we beat Firefox, but we'd rather they had the share than Microsoft."