Opera 9 is available

ITWire has an arcitle named " Opera making big profits from free software" . It explains why Opera can generating $14 Million gross profit out of $30 Million revenue.

The company has several main revenue sources. It licenses the browser to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), such as Motorola, to operating system owners, such as Symbian and user Interface (UI)/middleware owners, such as Canal+. Since 2003 it has focussed on offering the browser directly to other players that are placed higher in the value chain such as mobile operators.

It also collects revenue from integrated search and shopping bars, and partner companies pay a fee to Opera every time a user users the integrated search or shopping bar. Opera cooperates with a few select partners it feels can contribute value to its product and users. It says that deals with companies like Google, Fast, Lycos, InfoSeek, Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay are showing constant growth in revenues for Opera.

Opera also delivers a full-featured, embeddable version of its desktop browser that can be integrated into a wide range of applications. Adobe and Macromedia are important partners in this segment.

And when users subscribe to the premium version of its Webmail service, Opera splits the revenue with Outblaze, the company that operates the service.

Here is the link if you want to read.