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Opera’s encore
March 2, 2007
Opera, the web browser from Norway that lost out to Microsoft and Mozilla in the PC wars, is making a comeback in all manner of other devices.
Opera’s browser now sits on Nintendo’s DS and Wii game consoles, TV set-top boxes and millions of mobile phones.
On a visit to the FT’s San Francisco bureau, Hakon Wium Lee, chief technology officer, revealed Opera was working on technology that would allow seamless browsing from device to device. Users could carry on reading web pages they had left on their desktop PC’s browser when they moved to their mobile phones or to their TV or games console at home.
Opera is still bent on improving its PC browser, which it claims is leaner and faster than Internet Explorer and Firefox and has features such as widgets, a text magnifier and a Powerpoint-style presentation application.
But it has a share of only around 1 per cent in North America and pockets of popularity elsewhere (Russia 10 per cent, Australia 5 per cent).
Some operators have adopted its mobile phone browser, although most prefer an Openwave browser they can brand themselves. But more than 10m cell phone users have downloaded and activated its Opera Mini application that offers an alternative way of surfing the web on a phone.
Opera originally charged $29 for its PC browser, with a free version available that contained advertising. It went completely free after reaching a deal with Google to include its search box in the browser.
“We realised it should be free too late and, by that time, Firefox was ahead of us,” said Mr Lee.
But with Google paying it for the searches it originates and device manufacturers giving it a cut of every product they sell, Opera has at least regained a foothold in the ongoing battle of the browsers.
