They say it ain't over until the fat lady sings, well it looks like this particular Opera story is far from over folks no matter what some might tell you. Perhaps the most famous Norwegian export since the Vikings, Opera the web browser has certainly lost favour with the technology press. Once upon a time Opera was the big threat to Microsoft Internet Explorer, it was the only alternative browser client that anyone who was anyone would talk about. Then along came Mozilla Firefox and everything changed, pretty much overnight. Today, Opera struggles to get column inches ahead of even upstarts such as Google's Chrome.
You would be forgiven for thinking, then, that the fat lady has well and truly been singing as far as this web browser is concerned. But no, quite apart from the phenomenal success the cut-down mobile version has enjoyed within the mobile phone market, the full-sized original is not only still around but still kicking ass.
The latest incarnation, Opera 10 with Turbo (whoever thinks of these names should be taken out back and hit with a stick, by the way) has been downloaded a whopping 10 million times in just the first week of release.
Opera now reckons it has more than 40 million active desktop users of it's browser family, to which you can add tens of millions others browsing on Opera products for mobile phones, game devices and even televisions.
"While we have consistently grown in our download rates with each consecutive launch, Opera 10 has far exceeded any previous record we had" said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "To us, this means that Opera 10 delivers a more compelling reason to choose Opera, and that reason is Opera Turbo. The concept of turbo browsing was the result of our One Web initiative, as our goal is to ensure that Web browsing is fast, efficient and universal, anytime, anywhere."
