14 DAY TRIAL // Opera, the Norwegian web browser maker, has provided an update on its plans on the desktop and the mobile front. The big announcements were that Opera is preparing a full-fledged browser for Android phones and that the next major release will be Opera 11, a rebranded Opera 10.70.
The company held a press event titled “Up North Web” to underline some of the things it's working on. Along with the announcements, Opera talked about its vision of the web, the company has always been a strong supporter of web standards and even pioneered some of them.
“Opera has always believed that the Web will advance through open standards and that it should be available everywhere, irrespective of platform, device and geography,” Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera, said.
Opera 11
For desktop users, which, despite some numbers the company released, aren't that many, the big news is Opera 11. The development team is already working on the next major release and preview builds have been made available as Opera 10.70 so far.
Opera 11 promises to continue to build on the Opera legacy and add a couple of big and, frankly, needed features - extensions and hardware acceleration.
All major browsers have support for extensions, including Apple's Safari, so Opera is rather late to the game. The team is opting for the popular path of late, Opera extensions will be built on standard web technologies like HTML and JavaScript.
The second big feature, hardware acceleration, is a must for web browsers these days with all the hype Internet Explorer 9 has been generating.
Both Firefox and Chrome are working on it and, since IE9 is not out yet, except in beta form, it's anyone's guess which will be the first stable browser to bring full hardware acceleration support to the market.
It's probably not going to be Opera 11 though, which may not land until 2011. Opera has announced no official release date.
Opera Mobile for Android
For mobile users, the big news is the availability of Opera Mobile for Android devices. A beta is already live. Interestingly, Opera Mobile will also have support for some hardware acceleration.
Opera Mini, the light-weight version, has been available for Android owners since July.
71 million Mini users, 50 million desktop installs and 20 million on devices
The company also released some update usage numbers. Opera says 71 million people use Opera Mini, the stripped-down mobile browser. That figure is hardly surprising since it comes pre-installed on many of the mobile phones sold around the world.
A further 50 million, Opera says, have installed the desktop browser, though, how many of those are actual active users is unknown. Companies that track the browser market indicate that Opera is preferred by roughly 1 to 3 percent of internet users.
Finally, 20 million people use opera on devices such as web-enabled TV sets or the Nintendo Wii. Of course, there is bound to be some overlap between all of these.
Understandably, Opera has a lot of hope in the mobile web and says mobile usage will overtake desktop usage by 2015.