Opera software recently released the Opera Mini, a J2ME web browser that runs on almost any mobile phone. Russell Beattie raved about it recently and amongst other things, mentions that this could even become a platform in itself.

The “Opera Platform” is already meant to supply just such a service and is based on the standard Opera browser which is available for download on many mobile devices. The browser requires a lot of resources however and isn’t available for as many browsers as the Opera Mini.

Developers catering for the mobile device market have the constant headache of making their sites or applications comply with the myriad of inbuilt mobile browsers. With the Opera Mini, a web page can be created, tested with the Opera Mini simulator and made accessible to almost anyone with a Java capable phone. The Opera Mini might indeed become much more of a platform than the product Opera calls the Opera Platform.