The ignored browser
With most web users debating the merits of Firefox versus Chrome versus Internet Explorer, it’s peculiar that Opera, one of the older browsers available, barely ever gets a mention.
According to NetApplications, which publishes monthly reports on the state of the web browser market, Opera has managed to increase its market share in
2009 by a mere 0.08 percentage points, up from 2.23% in January to 2.31% by November. In comparison, Firefox, Safari and Chrome have increased their share of the market by close to 6 percentage points collectively, while Internet Explorer has lost the same amount.
By now though Opera must be used to this incremental increase in popularity.
At the end of 2007 its share of the market was 1.6%, Chrome didn’t exist, Safari had just 2% share and Firefox had 16%. Two years on and Chrome has flashed by Opera and both Safari and Firefox have opened up their lead. This despite Opera’s consistent determination to mark itself as innovative at every turn. Sadly, though, Opera’s best efforts are consistently undermined by leaner, nimbler opponents who understand their target market perfectly.
Innovation
Much of Opera’s marketing revolves around the central idea of “re-inventing the web”. Which is in line with Opera’s general strategy of positioning itself as an innovator. And in truth there are many things that Opera has done that are both innovative and useful. Mouse gestures, speed dial, visual tabs, built-in RSS, built-in email and its own integrated web server are just a handful of the features that have been emulated by other browsers over the years. Chrome and Safari, for example, have adopted Opera’s speed dial as a navigation tool while beta versions of Firefox’s latest release include a visual tab feature (although it is not enabled by default).
Fans of Opera will point out that not only does Opera often lead the way in new features, but it also packages everything that they want into a single application. So instead of needing a web browser, an email client and a bittorrent application, Opera does all of this in one application. This does have its advantages, but is also quite likely one of a couple of things that have limited Opera over the years to a niche market.
Many years ago Netscape introduced Communicator, the Swiss Army knife of online tools. Like Opera it offered an integrated email reader, news reader, web browser, a calendar and even an HTML editor. Basically everything a user could ever want was in one application. And it was a dog.
Communicator was cumbersome, ugly and while it did everything reasonably well, it didn’t really excel at anything. Which in part is Opera’s problem.
Opera is more attractive, faster and more modern than Communicator ever was but it still only does everything adequately well. Sure integrated email is nice to have but rendering web pages well is perhaps more important, especially if you’re a web browser.
Compare this with Firefox, or even Google’s Chrome. Both of these browsers started out life as a bare-bones browser. The aim was to create a browser that did one thing well: render web pages. Anything other than rendering web pages was handed off to extensions that users could add to boost the capabilities of the browser. Removing the clutter worked and both Firefox and Chrome are more popular than Opera with Firefox hitting the 25% market share mark as the year ends.
Opera, on the other hand, continues to add features to its browser that are both clever and innovative, but ultimately wasted in a world full of alternatives. Opera Unite is a good example. There is nothing wrong with the idea of including a web server in the browser so that users can publish their own photos, music and videos directly to the web. The only problem is that users are already using the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Posterous and FriendFeed to do this. Of course Opera Unite is so much more than anyone of these, but it again comes down to the same problem: Opera Unite is a great concept but when users just want to post a video online they don’t need their own server – no matter how easy it is to use.
Over the years Opera has rolled out many great new ideas, many of which are now commonplace in the world of web browsing for which users ought to be thankful. But if Opera really wants to improve its position in the market it needs to concentrate on making sure its browser component is the best it can be.
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