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Candid Interview with Opera Developer

Uberpulse has posted a interview at CES with David Rosen, a developer at Opera Software. The interview is entitled “Opera Browser Coming To The iPhone”, but the first 99% of the video have nothing to do with the iPhone, proving yet again that like sex, the iPhone sells. David isn’t able to demo Opera for Devices because of the lack of wifi (when will conferences finally get a grip on this?), but he gives a good overview of the new product’s features. Unsurprisingly for Opera, one of the key themes is standards support. He expresses skepticism about Mozilla’s ability to compete in the mobile space because their browser is too “desktop-centric” and thus unable to handle the tighter resource constraints of mobiles devices. Opera is a stronger contender in this space, he claims, because they have “the total support of the organization” behind their mobile efforts.

Otherwise, nothing earth-shattering: support for the improved plugin interface cooked up by Mozilla, Opera and others in 2004 and for widgets, which are small applications based on web technologies like HTML. The interview’s hook comes in the final three seconds, when David reveals (spoiler alert!) that they plan to make Opera run on the iPhone. This is sure to send the tech chattering classes into a frenzy, if and when it happens, but I’m not sure what the strategic value will be. It’s hard enough to get people to switch from the browser shipped with their desktop operating system, and on mobile devices this is likely to be nigh on impossible.