Tag Archives: Opera Software
Opera Founder Resigns from the Company

Jon S. von Tetzchner announced his resignation from Opera in an email to Opera employees. The founder cited differences of opinion with the Board and Management of the company as his reasons for leaving, and TechCrunch reports that he has other projects he is working on.
Opera Launches A Mobile App Store

Opera has launched a mobile app store called Mobile App. It will be a Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers will offer applications for BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Android. The number of apps available for download will vary according to the mobile OS you have. Opera used Appia to build their mobile app store. Appia offers about 140,000 apps. [GigaOM]
Opera 11 Was Downloaded 6.7 Million Times In The First Day

Desktop browser Opera 11 was released last week and the company had an interesting number to report about it. The Opera 11 browser was downloaded 6.7 million times in 24 hours. Opera 11 has browser extensions support and new tab functionalities.
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Opera Mini Hit 76.3 Million Users In October

Opera’s browser for mobile devices, Opera Mini, hit 76.3 million users last month. After their iPhone application was approved, they saw about one million downloads on the first day. About 41.6 billion pages were loaded in Opera Mini last month, generating in 616 million MB being consumed. Opera revealed these numbers in a report that monitored usage. [TechCrunch]
Opera Buys FastMail.FM

Opera has acquired webmail service company FastMail.FM. FastMail.FM started about 10 years ago and will continue to run and grow their email service. “Joining together Opera’s expertise in web browsers and especially the mobile market, and FastMail.FM’s expertise in email, will allow us to grow and take on the next big challenges in running and building an email service,” said the FastMail.FM in a statement. The terms of the deal were undisclosed. Opera has about 55 million users of their desktop browser and about 55 million users of the Opera Mini browser.
Opera Mini Browser Apple App Hits 1M Downloads In One Day

Opera Mini was at the top of the Apple App Store and featured across 22 countries when it launched. As a result the Opera Mini browser application was downloaded one million times on the first day. Below is the full press release.
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Opera Mini Browser Gets Approved For Apple App Store

Opera has finally received the green light for a new iPhone web browser. The mobile browser, Opera Mini will work for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
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Mozilla Supporting EFF To Advocate iPhone Jailbreak Support

Mozilla will be supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation to push for the legalization of iPhone jailbreaking with the U.S. Copyright Office. Mozilla CEO John Lilly stated that “choice is good for users, and choice shouldn’t be criminalized.” Jailbreaking an iPhone means that the device can accept software that is external from what is offered on iTunes. Apple believes that accepting any external software is a violation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).
“This is not us criticizing Apple,” stated Mozilla CEO John Lilly. “But it’s the principle of the thing. Choice is good for users, and choice shouldn’t be criminalized. The Internet is too important for all of us for that.”
Some of the popular applications available on jailbroken iPhone applications include tethering applications.
Mozilla may have a bias against Apple because developing a browser for the iPhone would require them to use the Webkit rendering engine used for Safari. “Given the choice, would we work on a platform where the sole company controlling it makes us unwelcome, or would we work on a platform, like Linux, where we are welcome? The answer is going to be easy for us,” Lilly stated in an interview with Computerworld.
Even if the U.S. copyright office grants jailbroken iPhones from being legal, Mozilla is still unlikely going to develop a browser for the iPhone. This is the same case with Opera Software ASA. It was reported earlier that Apple blocked Opera’s web browsing application from being added to the iTunes App Store. Other companies supporting the EFF include Skype and Cydia.
Apple Rejects Opera Browser From iPhone

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has blocked Opera Software ASA (OSL:OPERA) from releasing their own browser software into the App Store. The Opera browser is already supported by Windows Mobile and many people use it as their default rather than Internet Explorer. It seems that Microsoft is giving users more choice when it comes to mobile devices.
Since the co-founder and CEO of Opera, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner was interviewed by The New York Times a few days ago, there has been speculation for why Apple blocked them. The biggest reason is that Opera directly competes with the Safari web browser. Another reason why it is possible that Opera was blocked is that it has a Javascript interpreter built-in which has a tendency to use up a lot of memory and crash often.
Apple’s Safari browser has a lot of positives to it, but it does not support Flash for the iPhone. Apple tried to compensate it’s lack of Flash-support by providing a separate YouTube program that automatically full-screens any videos that are watched. But is that really enough?
