opvard

The iPhone only gets Opera Mini due to App Store restrictions, while Android will be getting the full browser (Opera Mobile) soon.

There's good news, though. There was an announcement last week that the iPhone version will be getting pinch zoom and hardware acceleration.

Note that I'm on the desktop team, so our mobile guys and gals will probably know more.

Our CTO has actually commented on the possibility of Opera going open-source:

http://blog.web2expo.com/2010/09/opera-cto-hakon-wium-lie-on-the-future-of-the-web-spoiler-its-not-dead/ http://www.infoworld.com/t/applications/operas-open-source-conundrum-360

I don't think there are any specific reasons for things not being implemented, except for other things simply having a higher priority and getting implemented first, I guess. There may be various problems, such as window.onerror apparently not being consistently implemented in other browsers, which could cause problems if implemented by us at this stage.

We don't have the resources to respond to bug reports, and we couldn't really say much anyway. The bug tracking system contains a lot of sensitive information, and we have a lot of business customers that would not be pleased if something somehow got out. I think it would take a lot of time and resources to open the BTS because we would need 100% watertight separation between different projects and access levels.

I personally wouldn't mind an open BTS, but it's up to the management. It's also their heads that would roll if something went wrong. Also, a lawsuit by a big and angry customer over leaked information could cause Opera to go bankrupt.

Well, first of all, it is very difficult to measure market share. For example, Net Applications insists that Opera desktop has a higher share of the market than Opera Mini, despite Opera Mini having more users (and Net Application counts users, not page hits).

That said, one should keep in mind that Opera is an independent browser vendor, and doesn't have the backing of huge corporations, like most of the other "big browsers" do. For example, Google can plaster the web with Chrome ads "for free" because it is in a dominant position in the online advertising market.

It should be noted that Opera actually has a market share of up to 20-30% in some markets. In total, Opera has more than 140 million users, which means a total global market share of about 7% (since there are nearly 2 billion people online in total).

The US has been a hard nut to crack, of course. But we are doing fairly well on the desktop in emerging markets. We're doing even better on mobile because in many parts of the world that's the only way you can get online.

Well, it could be something as simple as a bug report mistakenly being set to be available to the public. And as Opera's core is cross-platform, different issues will often affect various projects and customers. It could be a customer that doesn't want anyone to know that we are working on something for them, for example, but you could use various sources of information to piece things together.