Opera Reaches 300Million Users and Will Transition To WebKit Engine and Chromium
engine
10:10 am on Feb 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
Opera Software today announced reaching the milestone of 300 million monthly users across all its browser products on phones, tablets, TVs and computers.
"300 million marks the first lap, but the race goes on," says Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software. "On the final stretch up to 300 million users, we have experienced the fastest acceleration in user growth we have ever seen. Now, we are shifting into the next gear to claim a bigger piece of the pie in the smartphone market."
We had noted that Opera was planning to use WebKit for Mobile versions [webmasterworld.com], but is this implying that the PC version will change as well?
[edited by: bill at 4:23 am (utc) on Feb 28, 2013]
tedster
7:41 pm on Feb 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
but is this implying that the PC version will change as well?
Not directly, but the high praise here sure does leave the door wide open for that possibility, doesn't it?
SevenCubed
8:08 pm on Feb 13, 2013 (gmt 0)
300,000,001 as I type this. Via Ubuntu. Via Opera. Yep it works. Okay okay, I'm outta here to go mess around with my hardware now.
Solution1
6:27 am on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
Opera says:
The first product will be for Smartphones, which we'll demonstrate at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona at the end of the month. Opera Desktop and other products will transition later.
swa66
1:33 pm on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
I'd actually like them to keep their independent engine in all honesty and have them not transition to webkit/chromium nor any other. The reason is selfish, not because I use their products for daily browsing, but because as a webmaster it allows me a verification of my crafted things after validation against the standards; in 3 different standards compliant engines: gecko, webkit and opera after which I feel confident enough that I can say I've done my part and now the "trident" based crappy browsers (IE) need to adapt to the standards (or well I'll have to add stuff to work around their bugs and other mistakes).
Loosing one of those independent standards compliant implementations is a bad thing in my book. A pity.
Mobile: it's all already webkit anyway (safari and chrome), the rest doesn't get used in my stats.
J_RaD
1:58 pm on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
so they are just throwing in the towel?
drhowarddrfine
8:12 pm on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
By that if you mean get out of the browser business then, no. Webkit is not the browser. It's the engine. Chrome, Safari and, now, Opera will wrap their UI around webkit.
lucy24
9:12 pm on Feb 14, 2013 (gmt 0)
We had noted that Chrome was planning to use WebKit for Mobile versions, but is this implying that the PC version will change as well?
When your fingers typed "Chrome" did your brain mean "Opera"? I've been staring at this post since yesterday and can't make sense of it otherwise :(
Brett_Tabke
2:49 am on Feb 19, 2013 (gmt 0)
Being engaged in projects and events last week, I missed this news until today.
I have mixed feelings about the switch. I will be interested to see if Opera's unique interface continues or they throw the towel in completely and end up with yet another clone of Safari or Chrome. The best part of Opera is that it has dozens upon dozens more feature settings than chrome/safari combined.
