Opera started off as a PC browser developer but we [later] decided to move our browser core to other devices as well,” James Wei, Opera’s Asia-Pacific president, said Monday during a meeting with local media. “Opera wants to be platform independent.”

The company, he said, has since extended the reach of its browser to devices such as mobile phones, games devices, in-flight entertainment systems and television.

The mobile platform is leading the way, where over 35.6 million people used Opera Mini in September 2009, up 11.5 percent from the previous month and 150 percent the year before.

“Opera was not a latecomer to the browser scene but Internet Explorer (IE) became more popular due to Microsoft Windows,” he added, noting that Microsoft ships its Web browser together with their Windows operating system.

Executives here also reiterated the company’s vision of the next Internet wave, Web 3.0, where “devices can start talking to each other”. Key to its plans is a new browser-based collaboration service and platform the company calls, Opera Unite, which that turns the device into a Web server. This, the company said, will enable users to access and share files and data, including images and music, without the need for “third-party servers”.