Category: Opera Software

An Interview With Opera’s CEO, Jon von Tetzchner

By | August 20, 2007 | 4 Comments

The Register recently published an interview with Jon von Tetzchner and there are some very interesting questions and answers as well.

Andrew Brown, a big fan of Opera, wrote that he chose to move to FireFox because it was more compatible with new websites, partly citing Flickr compatibility. Do you feel you’re falling behind?


It’s a chicken and egg situation, which means we need to get more users.

I don’t want to agree with that. It’s not all about users. Of course, big market share helps a lot but let’s see the following situation:
Let’s say 1000 potential users decides to download Opera and surf their favorite sites, some of them found them incompatible with Opera. What they do? They are switching back. So you get more users for a week or so but then lose some of them due incompatibility with their favorite sites. Of course, market share still grows, but very slowly. As posted in 2007 July Browsers Market Share Results, Opera lost 0.02% of their market share that time. I tend to believe that decrease was not due the fact that users didn’t like Opera’s interface or features, but due incompatibility.

Opera can’t grow so fast due incompatibility with some sites.
Incompatible sites are incompatible due low Opera’s market share.
Paradox?

If Opera would get 20% of the market share in one night, this would help for sure. But that won’t happen.
So it’s up to Opera Software.

Another interesting answer was:

We just try to focus on our side. We’ve always focused on a somewhat richer interface. We’ve had a lot of negative comments ourselves over the years; for example, when we introduced tabbed browsing a lot of people said it doesn’t make sense. We’ve introduced things like zooming, mouse gestures and the like – and we find they find their way into other browsers; tabs found their way into IE7. We are being copied, but we would like to focus on features and giving users a good experience.

It’s fantastic that Opera is being copied, that means they are doing very good job in providing users best web experience, but how long can it happen? How long can you brainstorm and add new features without seeing rapid Opera’s market share growth while competitors with those new features becoming stronger (more popular). Why It’s Not Enough To Have All The Greatest Features?

Read an interview.

Opera Mini Dimension Receives New Banners

By | June 29, 2007 | 0 Comments

If you like to promote your favorite products and Opera Mini is one of them, check it now, now you have some new banners to promote Opera Mini Dimension.

Dimension - A new version of Opera Mini

And a few more, you can check them here.

Are You From Silicon Valley? Opera Needs You

By | June 26, 2007 | 0 Comments

Opera Software is openning an office with around 10 employees in Sillicon Valley which should help them to expand business and manage the partnership in the US, as there are many big companies located in Silicon Valley, for example: Google and Yahoo.

This move should also help them to get more attention in the US among the web users and promote Opera web browser more aggressively.

Check their job listings if you are interested.

Opera’s New Advertising Strategy? OperaMini vs iPhone

By | June 19, 2007 | 3 Comments

If you haven’t seen this video yet, be sure to do that.

Maybe that could mean war, here’s a Steve Jobs quote about iPhone:
“it is the full Internet in your pocket for the first time.”Of course, Opera wasn’t happy about that, as their Opera Mobile already do that. So they “complained” a bit, later that day Steve Jobs responded (quote):
“I apologize. I should have been more specific. Our products will be the first to allow normal, non-loser people to do these things.”Also, according to Apple, Safari 3 for Windows is much faster than Opera or Firefox. Of course, this seemed to be not so true.Well… I think that Opera is no longer a “quiet” browser. They’ve responded with a funny video about Opera Mini and iPhone. They are trying to get as many attention as possible now instead of just spreading word via it’s community. I am glad that they’ve changed the way in which they promote products. I am also almosut sure, that Apple will create something similar to this against Opera too. Maybe that means war. We will see in the future. As for now I am really happy with things they are doing now. They want attention in any price.
See Mom, we’re not a small company and we came to beat our competitors. So stop ignoring our browser, as we are here now.

Opera Team Will Develope Flash Replacement

By | June 16, 2007 | 0 Comments

Confused already? You won’t be after reading this article.

Opera Software vice president Tatsuki Tomita confirmed rumors, that they are developing Adobe Flash replacemement for Opera Mini and Mobile versions.

Why they are doing that? As you know, performance is really important
in the mobile phones, however, current flash technology seems using too much CPU and memory resources which slows down mobile phones and make their battery last less.

It’s not officially known yet if this new replacement will be able to play Flash too. Waiting for more news in the future.

As for now, I’d like to congratulate Opera team for such a decision.