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.
Let’s see:
– 71 million people use Opera Mini today
– 50 million people have installed Opera’s cross-platform desktop browser on their computers
– 20 million users around the world use Opera products on connected devices other than phones and computers, e.g. television sets.
This brings the total of Opera products users to a staggering 140 million users (September 2010), although obviously there’s some overlap here. Opera says they welcome two new users every second, on average.
Furthermore, thanks to its extensive network of handset makers and telecom operators from around the globe, Opera can potentially reach a far larger user base than that, which leads them to say they’re just getting started (they mentioned a combined subscriber base of 1.2 billion people as far as its partner network goes).
Couple of examples as to what agreements Opera tends to strike with those partners: the Samsung Galaxy S phone will come preloaded with Opera Mini in multiple regions soon, and one of the largest manufacturers of mobile phones in the world, Mediatek, plans to equip all its future phones with Opera software.
Some Opera Mini-specific stats:
– handling 36.9 billion page views per month (76% growth since December 09)
– which translates to about 5.35 petabytes of data, per month
– each user is good for an average of 519 page views per month
– 100% user growth since December 2009
– Opera Mini is compatible with over 3,000 different mobile devices
– the mobile browser product is used in 195 countries
Downright massive, and still so much potential for growth.
Opera notes that emerging markets are the fastest-growing for them (with India leading) and that they foresee this trend to continue for the next decade. Another bold statement: the company sees mobile Web usage outgrow desktop browser usage by 2015.
Opera’s positioned pretty well in that regard, and the company still manages to fly largely under the radar these days. Let’s see if the newly announced products will be able to change all that.
Edit: I’ve just visited Opera’s HQ in Oslo – there are about 350 people working here, which is half the number of employees the company has worldwide.
For some fun pictures from their main office, go here.
Bonus: behold the Opera Mini Globe: