Wandering by mistake

Well, maybe Opera gets more users in Poland, but this is natural, since there are more and more people using Internet here (as in any other part of the world). But when it comes to the market share, Opera is still not able to cross the (magic?) level of 6.0% (Dec 18 - Dec 24, 2007) of the Polish Internet users.

Take a look at this image, where Opera gains nothing within the last 4 months:


The image is a part of Central Europe marketshare situation - short analysis (part 1 / Poland) written by Zbigniew Braniecki AKA gandalf.

I wish Opera more luck in this new year. May 2008 be a year when the Opera Browser finds its way to more desktop computers in the whole world.

Hm… When it comes to the Opera stats in Poland, there were no significant changes last month. We had 6.9% of the browser market share in Poland on February 2007. Firefox, of course, got its next piece of cake (29.3% of market share ).

According to the latest ranking.pl stats, the number of Polish Opera users exceeded the magic million.

But I'm not sure if it's a reason to be happy for Opera Software.

My adventure with Opera started on December 2000, when the ad-sponsored Opera 5.0 was released. It was a very niche browser in Poland then, used by (if I remember well) 0.2% of the Polish Internet users or so. Well, it is still almost unknown in many parts of the world, including the United States. But the Opera popularity was systematically growing in Poland. It reached 1% of users on September 2002, 2% on November 2003. Well - it seemed to be a huge success by then. There was Internet Explorer with almost 97%, Opera with 2% and other browsers having the remaining 1% of users. On September 2005 Opera has gained 6.8% of the Internet users living in Poland. And today? You will never guess - we are still at the very same level. What has happened? Why the Opera popularity growth has stopped a year and a quarter ago? At the time, when Opera gone completely free - no ads, no registration fee. What has happened? Did we reach the critical point, which will never be exceeded? Will the market be shared between Internet Explorer and Firefox, and the remaining little crowd of other browsers, including Opera. Opera, which is often not even mentioned by its name - it's called an Internet Channel, the Web Browser, or something, and only the my.opera.com users know, that Opera is hidden under these nicks.

The point of this post is not worrying about amount of the Polish Opera users (it seems that there are more of us in Poland than in both of the Americas). The point is: what has happened? Firefox is not the answer, since Opera market share used to grow even after Firefox was successfully launched.

To be clear: I'm not concerned about all of this. I'm just curious what the Opera marketing staff would tell about this phenomenon.

Sprawa sparodiowanej tutaj „recenzji” Opery doczekała się groteskowego finału w najnowszym biuletynie Gemiusa. Otóż „recenzję” tę podano jako przykład... żartobliwej opinii fanów Firefoksa na temat Opery 9. Aż żal, że w całej sieci nie można było znaleźć żadnego innego, bardziej rzeczowego lub przynajmniej naprawdę dowcipnego, artykułu konkurencji...

Przy okazji chciałbym zauważyć, że Opera nie oferuje niestety funkcji podglądu zakładek. Autorka tekstu miała zapewne na myśli podgląd zawartości kart (błąd powtórzono za magazynem CHIP Online).

Z życzeniami mniej osobliwego poczucia humoru oraz czytania komentarzy do polecanych blogów,
Autor (lub, jak wolą mówić niektórzy czytelnicy, andol).