The Register interview with Opera CEO

The Register has a great interview with the Opera founder and CEO Jon von Tetzchner online (via Open Gardens)

There is a lot happening in the browser industry at the moment with the Safari and Webkit moves around iPhone, Windows support, and AIR, Firefox going for it's next major version, and the overall hype around web technologies and RIA. However, in this picture we should not forget Opera, the Norwegian browser company, that has actually landed a few very nice deals, with the Nintendo collaboration around Wii and Nintendo DS being the biggest of them (putting Opera into millions of devices). Also their mobile browser, Opera Mini, is doing well according to their CEO.

I believe that the future of browsers is in open source based engines, just because the nature of browser engines suiting perfectly for open source development, but Opera keep proving me wrong along side the massive IE.

One of the most interesting tidbits from the interview was how according to Tetzchner Opera's marketshare is growing and all browser's are facing quite a lot of compatibility issues. I have not really seen these issues with either Firefox or Safari, but it would be nice to see an up-todate comparison chart of the main browsers. Most likely Tetchner is right in implieng that there is a lot to improve in all browsers, and user experience wise there is no clear winner at the moment. The growth of Opera must be fueled by Wii, it would be hard to imagine them taking marketshare at the moment.

The other interesting comment is on the new versions of Opera and Opera Mobile: What's happening is there's a new version in the works based on Opera 9. On Opera Mobile 4.0, we're introducing desktop mode and zooming. The desktop mode is based on a new kernel. The Opera 8 browsers are based on what we call Core 1, while Opera 9 is based on
Core 2. There are significant changes under the hood.

How the changes under the hood translate into user experience will be interesting to see.

Clearly Opera is not folding yet, and are going to seriously compete with Safari, Firefox and IE.