Don’t get too excited, speculations and rumors.

Now here is something to kick start your day. As you might know, Windows Phone 7.5 does not have a native code kit (NDK), which limits your choice to IE and IE based web browsers.



However, things will change later this year as according to the leaked presentation, Windows Phone 8 will finally support a native code and solve one of the underlying issues with WP7.

How is this related to Opera? Well, in one of the Windows Phone suggestions (titled “Allow alternative browsers like Opera Mobile to enter the Marketplace”), Opera employee had said some interesting things, we quote:

I work at Opera Software and, whilst I can’t comment on what we’re doing and what we’re not, I can confirm that I’ve also upvoted this feedback. Currently, Microsoft offer an SDK to software developers. This will allow people to create apps that appear to be a new web browser – such as the ones in the Marketplace to date – but they’re actually using IE as the base. If you wish to create a web browser based off another rendering engine, you’ll need an NDK – so I’m told – which Microsoft has not yet made available. However, in saying that, if you search the web, you’ll find that someone has already unofficially ported Opera Mobile and Opera Mini to Windows Phone 7. You can install these versions if you have an unbranded version of the Windows Phone OS. I recommend that you wait for official releases though.

While this does add some fuel to our speculation fire, here is where things get really interesting: the app porting from Windows 8 to Windows Phone and vice versa is ridiculously easy, at least if you know what you are doing. In fact, one of the developers used as much as 90% of the Windows Phone code to port a game to Windows 8.

So, considering that at least one of the Opera employees would like to see a Windows Phone 8 version of the Opera Mobile and the fact that porting apps is extremely easy, we see no reason why Opera would not do both.

What do you think?