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 founder Jon S. von Tetzchner has resigned from the company.
In an email to Opera employees, von Tetzchner said that “It has become clear that The Board, Management and I do not share the same values and we do not have the same opinions on how to keep evolving Opera. As a result I have come to an agreement with the Board to end my time at Opera. I feel the Board and Management is more quarterly focused than me.” You can read the full email below. → 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 is launching a designated, web-based mobile app store today, called the Opera Mobile Store. The store will be a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers.
The Opera Mobile Store is actually powered by Appia (formerly PocketGear), which recently shifted its business model to providing white label mobile app stores for providers. For now, Opera will offers both free and paid applications for a variety of mobile platforms and devices, including Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems . → Read More
Back in the day, before the iPhone, before Android, before Webkit, before Skyfire, when we suffered through mobile web experiences using Pocket IE or worse yet maybe a preinstalled Motorola WAP 2.0 browser (dark times my friends), there was a bright and shining star that would aid those in need. That star was Opera. Its two flagship mobile browsers—Opera Mobile and Opera Mini—were a delight to proto-smartphone owners and T9‘ers alike. A premium, relatively elegant web experience on just about any little phone and mostly for free. I think I paid 5 bucks for Opera Mobile on my old BlackJack II and it was well worth it. → Read More
2010 was a big year for Opera’s mobile browser, Opera Mini. The browser’s iPhone app was approved, saw one million downloads in the first day and since the mobile browser has been growing like gangbusters. Today, Opera released its state of the mobile report showing that Opera finished the year off with additional growth.
In December 2010, Opera Mini had over 85.5 million users, a 6.8% increase from November 2010 and an 84.7% increase in unique users since December 2009. Opera Mini users viewed over 46.7 billion pages in December 2010, which is a 4.6% percent increase since November, and a 125.5% increase in page views since December 2009. → Read More
Earlier this week, Google wrote a very short post on their relatively small Chromium blog to announce a big change: they were dropping support for the H.264 codec in Chrome. While they may have tried to whisper it, the post resulted in a shitstorm that reached high into the heavens. It seems as if just about everyone weighed in on the decision (including us, twice).
As a result of the fallout, Google decided to follow-up on their three-paragraph post with a ten-paragraph one today more clearly outlining why they’re making the move. It certainly is more clear, and that’s perhaps what makes it even more frustrating.
As Google notes, this is all about the HTML <video> tag. The search giant cites an impasse in figuring out one codec to use for the future of HTML5-based web video. Safari and IE are backing H.264, but Mozilla and Opera refuse to, and had been backing Ogg Theora. So Google dreamed up WebM and got Mozilla and Opera to sign on board. Unfortunately, we’re still at an impasse, because it does not appear that Safari and IE will be doing the same any time soon. → 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
Opera released a new version of its desktop browser yesterday, Opera 11. The new browser shipped with a number of new features, including support for browser extensions and a new tabbing functionality.
It looks like the release was a success; Opera just announced that it saw 6.7 million downloads of the new browser in the first day alone. So how does that compare to downloads of Opera 10? Well, the company says that in its first week open to the public, Opera 10 was only downloaded 1.7 million times per day. → 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
Beat me with a stick! I just had to plod through Manufacture Royale’s nine page long bloody press release – only to have reasserted what they mention in the first few lines; that they are “unashamedly elitist.” Wipe my brow and hand me an ol’ timey hallucinogenic absinthe, because I need to lay back in a hammock on a steamship and read some Jules Verne to appreciate this steampunk mechanaut. → Read More
Opera’s mobile browser, Opera Mini has had a big year. It’s iPhone app was approved, saw one million downloads in the first day and since the mobile browser has been growing like gangbusters. Today, Opera released its state of the mobile report showing that Opera is continuing to grow in terms of usage.
In October, Opera Mini had over 76.3 million users, a 7.1% increase from September 2010 and more than 92% compared to October 2009. Opera Mini users viewed over 41.6 billion pages in October 2010, which is an increase of 142% since last October. → 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
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
