“There’s a revolution on the television side wherein browser or Internet companies are providing services”
Jan Standal, VP Desktop Products, Opera Software, talked about how Opera has evolved to be the preferred browser on mobile platforms and the competitive scenario in the desktop and mobile browser segments. By Pupul Dutta
What is the future of Web browsing on the PC?
We are expecting about 150 million new users through Internet-enabled PCs before the end of this year. In the recent past, we have seen a few changes in the Internet environment. The earlier operating system (OS) battle has now been transformed into a battle between browsers. Back in 2001, when this struggle to capture browser market share was at its peak, especially between Microsoft and other browsers, the former bagged 95% of the business, defeating any other available alternative.
Today, browsers have evolved into application platforms reducing the significance of the OS.
Is Opera planning to launch its own operating system?
Opera’s mobile platform, which is a full-fledged operating system based on Web technologies, was launched some time back.
Currently we are doing R&D work for desktops. Though Web browsers can use any OS, its not important for them to be OSs as well. There are a plethora of things, which are not perfect for a Web-based browser and vice versa for an OS. Creating an OS produces some unnecessary limitations when one can easily use Linux and have Google or Opera as a Web browser.
It’s highly doubtful if launching an OS is the right direction to go.
Another thing with a Web-based OS is that you can’t actually choose a browser and are limited to a single application. In such an environment, innovations stop happening.
Microsoft too hit a deadlock, as the Internet was not moving anywhere and a backlog was created. It’s a slippery slope.
Opera launched Opera OS on mobile platforms. Why didn’t it become popular?
We worked with several global operators but we discontinued the project later as we felt that it wasn’t needed. According to our strategies and market policies, we found it fit to provide a browser on any device than giving people the option to choose between OS and browser.
The OS does a lot of tasks that a browser shouldn’t actually be doing and we chose not to get diverted from our original plan. There are OSs available now that are very popular such as Google’s Android and it makes no sense to try and replace that with a Web-based OS when we can rather spend time making the best browser for that platform or any other platform.
What do you have to say about your rivals, Microsoft and Google?
When we talk about rivals, Microsoft would be the biggest given the sheer market share it enjoys. Google launched Chrome just about three and a half years back. It was the latest addition in the list of competitors that we have had in the browser space.
When Google launched its browser, it ensured everybody heard about its new product. With a vast distribution network and aggressive marketing, they ensured that people tried Chrome before switching to another browser. The company used social networks and many more platforms to make it popular. Secondly, it came bundled with Google’s other products, which ensured them a big crowd of followers.
Google’s entry into the browser business has been a major game changer for us given the way that the company has marketed its products and also the way that it has managed its distribution. This set a new trend in the economics of the browser business and there was also increased competitiveness.
This far, it has been a big challenge for us to enable consumer growth. We had to evaluate our strategies to align them with the competition. However, we have seen an increase in terms of users downloading the Opera browser. Basically, we need to educate people about browsers and their usage. Most people use them without knowing what a browser is or can be used for. As more and more people are becoming aware and getting detached from Chrome, given its frequency to crash, they are discovering other browsers as well.
What are the technology trends that you have been seeing of late?
Of late, the biggest change is the race to provide HTML 5 support. Interestingly, the standards are being written and changed and the innovations in this space are also evolving by the minute. It has now become imperative to support all of the standards.
Secondly, Web-based browsers have now begun to target new genres of applications, especially game developers. To do that one needs to support HTML 5 to begin with and, secondly, hardware acceleration is a must. This means that a user should be able to use the graphics card on the PC or mobile phone to accelerate graphics. This is a revolutionary change for game developers because they have to develop various applications in order to support so many technologies and platforms.
Lastly, we are witnessing a revolution on the television side as well, wherein browser or Internet companies are providing services like Facebook and Twitter.
We are working with big OEMs who come out with browsers on TV and applications that run on them. Providing a Web-based application store to a television vendor is like providing an OS even though it Web-based.
