February 25, 2009
A laggard in the desktop Web browser market, Opera is the undisputed leader in the mobile phone space with over 20 million monthly users of its Opera mini browser, a 12.1% increase from the prior month.
The “State of the Mobile Web” report released today by the Norwegian company, spotted 2 trends :
- The number of people using their mobile phone to access the Web keeps on growing at a double digit rate;
- Mobile phone users are spending more time on their handset browsing the Web pages, resulting in an 18 per cent increase in page views per users.
In January, Opera Mini users generated more than 122 million megabyte of data which is compressed 90% on average. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed more than 1.1 petabyte of data, the first month that Opera Mini servers crossed the 1 petabyte mark.
“To compare, Facebook has 1 petabyte of photos stored. We’re processing all of Facebook’s photos every month through our Opera Mini servers,” explains Opera spokesperson, Falguni Bhuta.
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Posted by TechPulse 360
February 25, 2009
Sundar Pichai, which is behind the successful launch of Google's Chrome Internet browser, explains why Google is joining the fight against Microsoft (credit: niallkennedy)
Google recently announced that it is supporting the European Union antitrust proceedings against Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows, joining Mozilla (Firefox) and Opera.
Apple which holds an 8 per cent market share is now the only “major” Web browser maker that has not join the fight against Microsoft.
“Google believes that the browser market is still largely uncompetitive, which holds back innovation for users. This is because Internet Explorer is tied to Microsoft’s dominant computer operating system, giving it an unfair advantage over other browsers,” wrote Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president for product management in a blog post.
“The value of competition for users (even in the limited form we see today) is clear: tabbed browsing, faster downloads, private browsing features, and more.”
Microsoft has until March 12 to respond to the EU commission’s objections, which is threatening the software maker with a “significant fine” and may require it to disable Internet Explorer “code” and offer a range of competing browsers in all new PCs, including Mozilla’s Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Opera.
The latest EU investigation stems from a complaint filed in December 2007 by Norwegian browser maker Opera Software.
1 Comment | news, software | Tagged: eu, explorer, firefox, Internet, Microsoft, Mozilla, opera, pichai | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
February 16, 2009
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, browsing on a mobile phone just got faster with the release of Opera Turbo and Skyfire’s latest browser.
Opera Turbo is a server solution that sits in a mobile carrier data center and compresses mobile Web traffic before sending it to an Opera browser for desktops or smartphones.
The Norwegian company latest product uses a similar concept already available in Opera mini; its Java-based browser already available for hundreds of mobile phones.
However Opera mini is still limited in its ability to display multimedia content, like Flash-based videos, Quicktime files, etc; for which Skyfire’s browser excels.
Skyfire further its lead over Opera mini in multimedia browsing
The Mountain View, Calif.-startup just released an update to its mobile browser available for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 phones.
Version 0.9 now supports wider screens and higher resolutions (WVGA and WQVGA), improves the search box refining auto-suggestions, enables the download of media files for later watching and listening, updated plug-ins support (Flash 10, Silverlight 2.0 and Quicktime 10) and improved the overall speed of the browsing experience.
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Posted by TechPulse 360
February 2, 2009
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser now commands 67.55 percent of global browser market share, according to data released by Web metrics company Net Applications today.
Most of the other major browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox (21.53 percent), Apple Safari (8.29 percent) or even Google Chrome (1.12 percent) are gaining shares, except perhaps for Opera’s (0.7 percent).
Looking closer, Internet Explorer 6 share was cut almost by half to 19.21 percent, while Internet Explorer 7 rose slightly to 47.32 percent.
Internet Explorer 8 that just launched last week is faster than its predecessors and has some compatibility enhancements to make loading difficult-to-view sites easier.
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Posted by TechPulse 360
January 14, 2009
Chief development officer, Christen Krogh, overseas Opera's long term strategy
Despite the economic turmoil, Norwegian Internet browser company, Opera Software, still expects to grow 35% to 50% this year again.
“Don’t be surprise, this is the similar kind of growth, both in terms of users and revenues, that we experienced since we started the company in 1995,” explains Opera chief development officer, Christen Krogh in an exclusive interview with TechPulse 360.
Krogh is in Silicon Valley this week from Oslo, Norway, and will attend the much awaited Churchill Club debate on Internet browsers tomorrow.
In his chief development officer role, Krogh is looking for technologies to supplement Opera’s Internet browser functionalities; but also hiring engineers to do customisation and support of the Opera browser for customers like phone carriers, Internet service providers, hardware manufacturers, etc. “The market is exploding. The Internet population is growing fast, as well as the devices connected to the Internet,” adds Krogh.
The Opera browser is available for desktops, smartphones (Opera mobile), standard phones (Opera mini) but also set top boxes, Nintendo Wii and more recently the Nintendo DSi, currently only sold in Japan.
Leave a Comment » | interview, news, web 2.0 | Tagged: Chrome, firefox, Google, Krogh, Microsoft, opera | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
January 2, 2009
Despite loosing market share, Microsoft Internet Explorer is by far the dominant window to the Net
For the first time in about 10 years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser market share fell below 70 per cent, ending 2008 with 68 per cent compare to almost 80 per cent 2-years ago.
At the same time, Firefox’s market share rapidly rose from 13.7 per cent to 21.3 per cent while Apple’s Safari browser jumped to almost 8 per cent from 4.7 per cent, according to data collected by Net Applications.
Although Internet Explorer 7 is the current version of Microsoft’s net browser – and IE8 is expected to come out this year – IE6 is still the dominant browser in business environments.
4 Comments | analysis, news, software, web 2.0 | Tagged: Apple, Chrome, firefox, Google, Microsoft, netscape, opera, safari | Permalink
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December 11, 2008
Google said Thursday it has taken the beta test label off its Chrome browser, which now has 10 million active users around the world.
Google's Chrome browser claims 10 million users
In just 100 days, 14 updates to the browser were released improving the product’s stability and performance, Google said in a blog entry. “With today’s fifteenth release, we are taking off the ‘beta’ label,” said Vice President Sundar Pichai.
The announcement is likely to turn up the heat on this latest skirmish in the long running browser wars that first broke out a decade ago between Microsoft and Netscape.
While Google Chrome’s has attracted attention, it has a long way to go. In a recent market survey, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer retained 71 percent share and up-and-coming Mozilla Firefox claimed 20 percent.
Safari had climbed to nearly 7 percent with Opera and Netscape holding onto less that 1 percent. Chrome’s share was 0.7%.
Still, on the technical front, Google claimed progress. Video and audio glitches common in early version of Chrome has been ironed out, and the browser’s speed continues to increase.
Users also can now import bookmarks from other browsers and key RSS and autofill features are on the way.
1 Comment | news, software | Tagged: Apple, Beta, Browser Wars, Browsers, Chrome, Google, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Mozilla Firefox, netscape, opera, safari | Permalink
Posted by Mark Boslet
November 26, 2008
Opera's small Silicon Valley office accommodates a pinball and a sofa (IKEA?). But no ping-pong yet!
Here are some bright news for the folks here in Silicon Valley who have just been laid off from Yahoo, Google, Palm and others.
The small Norwegian company, whose Internet browser competes with Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari – on the desktop and the mobile market – is expanding its U.S. headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
Opera Software’s local chief, Rod Hamlin is looking for new offices in the Bay Area to accommodate the new hires; he expects to nearly double the size of the Silicon Valley office to about 40 people.
“We’re looking to hire talented engineers and/or to acquire technology companies to help us work on a sleuth of projects we have,” said Hamlin in a conversation late last week.
Time to brush up those résumés. Anyone else hiring?
Leave a Comment » | news, software, web 2.0 | Tagged: Apple, Chrome, firefox, Google, Internet, Microsoft, Mozilla, opera, palm, safari | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
November 24, 2008
The Opera Mini Internet browser supports all Java enabled phones
In spite fierce competition from Google, Firefox and Microsoft, Opera software is not giving up on the Internet browser market.
The Norwegian company is releasing tomorrow the final version of its Opera Mini 4.2 browser for all Java-enabled phones, including Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices.
However, the version for Google’s G1 Android phone is still in beta and no versions – native or Java – are yet planned for Apple’s iPhone.
“Special porting to Android was required as it uses a proprietary implementation of Java,” explains Opera spokesperson, Falguni Bhuta.
The beta of the Opera Mini 4.2 browser was announced two weeks ago in conjunction of a new datacenter improving browsing speeds for U.S. users. The new mobile browser adds colourful “skins”, improved support for YouTube and other mobile video services and better synchronisation between mobile phones and Mac/Windows PCs.
The new version can be downloaded here directly from your phone, starting tomorrow morning at 10 AM (EDT).
3 Comments | news, software, wireless | Tagged: android, browser, Chrome, g1, Google, Internet, java, Microsoft, opera, youtube | Permalink
Posted by TechPulse 360
