As promised, Opera Software (OSL: OPERA) is announcing its first U.S. carrier deal this week at CTIA — too bad it’s with Virgin Mobile USA (NYSE: VM) and not one of the country’s four-largest providers. Not only is the agreement limited because it is with a carrier that doesn’t have a subscriber base that uses a ton of data, but also because the deal is for the company’s free Mini browser, which anyone can download from its web site. It does not cover the company’s more robust mobile product, which a carrier pays for based on usage. Both products do allow users to view most web sites from their mobile devices.
Despite those limitations, the deal does accomplish one of Opera’s goals — gaining awareness in the U.S. To date, it has been very popular in Europe and other parts of the world, but its U.S. footprint has been limited. The company said that is changing, and that Opera Mini growth has jumped 73 percent year-over-year and that the users are viewing 222 page views a month on average. It’s unclear how much the Virgin deal will accelerate that growth. At first, Virgin will make Opera Mini available as a free application download on select devices, and later, it will start pre-installing it on select handsets. By mid-April, the browser will be available on eight handsets. Virgin was likely introduced to Opera through its acquisition of Helio, which was using the browser on its phone.
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