When you’re in fifth place in the browser races, there’s room to be a little goofy. That’s why it can be a pleasure to read the releases coming from Opera Software, the quirky Oslo-based company responsible for the eponymous Opera browser — the underdog currently enjoying a 2.4 percent share of the browser market behind IE, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari. → Read More
Opera Software makes some damn fine browsers, as tens of millions of people around the world can attest. Apple products like the iPhone 4 and the iPad, of course, come with a decent mobile version of Safari, so users only get to enjoy Opera’s products when they actually visit the App Store and look for a replacement browser.
Nevertheless, when the Opera Mini iPhone app hit the marketplace back in April 2010, it proceeded to get downloaded 1 million times in its first day.
The company is today releasing Opera Mini 6 for iOS (iTunes link), and I had the chance to test it on a second-generation iPad. My guess it will get downloaded by masses of people once again – or at least it should IMHO. → Read More
Browser developer Opera Software has established a joint venture with Telling Telecom, a major mobile phone distributor in China. The goal is to develop a customized mobile browser for the Chinese market.
The joint venture will enable the partners to combine Opera’s core browser technology with local content, operations and Telling’s distribution network within China. The registered capital of the joint venture will be 135 million RMB (roughly $20.5 million). → Read More
Begun, the alternative app stores war has.
According to a tweet from GetJar Networks, which provides an alternative, platform-agnostic mobile applications marketplace, the Opera’s Mini browser has been kicked off the alternative app store offered by the Lithuanian company.
The reason for the ban (based on later messages GetJar posted on Twitter – they say an explanatory blog post is coming soon) is that Opera Mini now boasts an app store of its own, courtesy of a partnership with Appia (formerly PocketGear). → Read More
Opera Software on Monday teased a preview of Opera for Tablets, a custom browser for hybrid touch devices, which it said would be debuting at CES this week.
In a video, embedded below, the company briefly showed the product in action on an Android tablet, a Samsung Galaxy Tab to be more specific.
TechCrunch has now learned that the company will also show off some Windows 7 tablets and netbooks running its latest browser at CES – we’ll see if the CrunchGear team can shoot some videos. → Read More
“Check out Opera.com“, a spokesperson for the eponymous Norwegian software company asks me. I do, and what I see seems to be Opera Software co-founder Jon S. von Tetzchner‘s email inbox, browseable and all.
Evidently, this isn’t the man’s actual email inbox, but seemingly the result of a night of drunken brainstorming by the marketing team at the wacky browser software maker. Nevertheless, the actual news can be gathered by browsing the emails to von Tetzchner: Opera has apparently hit the 150 million user milestone. → Read More
Opera Software has released its (second) free mobile browser product for the Android platform. Grab the app, dubbed Opera Mobile 10.1 beta, now in Android Market or here.
Yes, Opera was already available for Android, in a fairly limited way. Opera Mini, has been live on the market since July, but now you can also download the company’s full-fledged browser, Opera Mobile, from the application store.
Here’s what it’s packing (after the jump): → Read More
Announced last week at a global press event, Opera Software has now debuted the next version of its desktop browser, aptly named Opera.
The new browser, which is dubbed Opera 11 and is currently in ‘alpha’ mode, features extensions for the first time in the history of the company / product. → Read More
Lots of abbreviations in the title and URL, but with an audience like TechCrunch’s I’m not too worried about the point coming across or not. At this week’s Opera press event held in Oslo, Norway, I had a chance to spend a couple of minutes talking to Håkon Wium Lie, who is not only the software company’s chief technology officer but also broadly known as the “father of CSS”.
In 1994 while at W3C, Wium Lie was the man who proposed the concept of Cascading Style Sheets, which describes how documents are presented on screens, in print, or perhaps how they are pronounced. A graduate of the MIT Media Lab, he also spent quite some time at CERN working on the World Wide Web project together with Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau (see our earlier interview with the latter here).
We talked CSS3 (the next iteration of Cascading Style Sheets), HTML5 (the next iteration of the HTML language) and the role of Opera Software as a company in both. → Read More
By now, I assume you’ve heard that Opera Software will soon be bringing its full-fledged mobile browser product, Opera Mobile, to Android Market for people to download and use free of charge. The company declines to say when exactly they intend to launch the product, going only as far as to say it will be “within the next few weeks”.
The public release of the consumer offering was just a matter of time, as Opera Mobile for Android as a product already existed, albeit for Opera’s OEM partners only. → Read More
So browser extensions are finally making their way to Opera’s desktop browser product.
The next release thereof, Opera 11, will boast the welcome new feature, although there’s no telling when even the alpha version of the browser will hit the Web exactly (the word is “very soon”).
I caught up with Arnstein Teigene, who is product manager for desktop browser add-ons at Opera, to ask him about the forthcoming feature and what it means for the company and the Web as a whole. → Read More
Evidently most of the coverage on Opera Software today revolves around what products and features are coming from the Norwegian company next (Opera Mobile for Android and desktop browser extension capabilities in Opera 11, to name but a few).
But the company also took the time to tout its size this morning at the press event in Oslo, and I have to admit some of the numbers blew me away. → Read More
I’m here in Oslo, Norway, attending Opera Software‘s global press day, and the company’s just made a number of announcements on stage – unfortunately while I wasn’t able to enjoy a second of internet connectivity.
Now that things have cleared up on that front, here are some of the most important things Opera’s executive team announced: → Read More
When Opera Software last week released the final version of its Opera browser (version 10.60), it titled its press release ‘What is faster than the fastest?’.
The company touts other features, like built-in geolocation and webM support, as well but not nearly as much as it boasts about its browser’s speed.
By doing so, the software maker aims to challenge claims that Google’s Chrome browser is, in fact, speedier than Opera and other popular browsers such as Firefox, Safari and IE.
In the midst of the browser wars, an Opera-employed copywriter has now turned to one of the most over-used but still amusing Internet memes, and has come up with some custom subtitles for the famous Hitler outburst scene from the film ‘Der Untergang’ (via Download Squad). → Read More
A mere two weeks after releasing the beta version, Opera Software has just announced that Opera 10.60 is now available in its final iteration.
The desktop browser client, as mentioned in our earlier post, comes with geolocation (see an interactive map with downloads of the Opera browser in real time here), a fresh UI, WebM support for HTML5 video and speed improvements. → Read More
Opera has released its latest State of the Mobile Web report, and once again it has registered reasonable growth, with Opera Mini users increasing by 4.2% compared to April 2010. Since that month, page views have also gone up 7.7%, Opera says.
For this report, Opera analyzed one 24-hour period to see how Opera Mini is used throughout the day in the top 10 countries (Indonesia, Russia, India, China, Nigeria, Ukraine, South Africa, the United States, Vietnam and the United Kingdom). Turns out that for all of those, regardless of differences in economy, culture or location, the four hours between 8 PM and midnight apparently account for a disproportionate amount of mobile data consumption. → Read More
Opera Software has struck a deal with Russia’s federal mobile operator OJSC MegaFon under which MegaFon’s special package “Unlimited Internet with Opera Mini” will be distributed to all Russian territories.
That may not sound like much at first glance, but you have to consider that MegaFon boasts over 53 million mobile subscribers, spanning all seven Federal Districts of Russia.
Furthermore, MegaFon serves some 39 percent of all mobile Web traffic in Russian territories, according to recent research (it was first in Russia to run a 3G network based on UMTS). The operator says internal statistics have shown that Opera Mini subscribers effectively generate twice the traffic than any other MegaFon user. → Read More
Opera Software has struck a deal with Russia’s federal mobile operator OJSC MegaFon under which MegaFon’s special package “Unlimited Internet with Opera Mini” will be distributed to all Russian territories.
That may not sound like much at first glance, but you have to consider that MegaFon boasts over 53 million mobile subscribers, spanning all seven Federal Districts of Russia.
Furthermore, MegaFon serves some 39 percent of all mobile Web traffic in Russian territories, according to recent research (it was first in Russia to run a 3G network based on UMTS). The operator says internal statistics have shown that Opera Mini subscribers effectively generate twice the traffic than any other MegaFon user. → Read More
Some people dislike April Fools Day. We do not. In fact, we think those who do are wrong. Not to mention a little weird, too.
It’s just damn funny when we post things like Google going nuclear and witness respectable industry blogs like Venturebeat break the news in quasi real time … only to realize we were just kidding later on. Good times. But you know what’s better than a good April Fools joke?
A good April Fools joke that keeps on giving long after April 1 has passed. → Read More
Fresh off the heels of the release of Safari 5, Norwegian software company Opera is today launching version 10.60 of its desktop browser. And yes, they promise it’s faster. Much faster. Like ’50% faster than its predecessor on selected JavaScript tests’ faster.
Opera 10.60 (beta) also boasts a fresh UI, geolocation support and WebM support for HTML5 video, so it isn’t all about the need for speed. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
