Opera Wants to Reinvent the Web through New Media, File Sharing Service
Norway's Opera Software has launched a new, free service designed for easy file sharing of content with online.
A few days ago we were telling you about the bold announcement that Opera had made saying they will reinvent the Web. The much expected moment has arrived and the company must prove it’s not all just words.
The new “star” released by Opera is part of its Web browser and its main focus is p2p (peer-to-peer) sharing no need for data stored on servers in the middle. Users can view the files using any browser.
However, the enthusiasm of the market didn’t equal the trumpeting announcement:
"There were some expectations ahead of the announcement, so the market is only mildly disappointed”, commented analyst Peder Strand at SEB Enskilda. Nonetheless, the same analyst added that "Opera today makes around 4 crowns ($0.62) a year per desktop user on average," pointing out that if through this new service the company manages to double the number of users this would mean a great success for Opera which will be easily noticed at the financial level.
According to Epochtimes, “Shares in Opera were down 2.7 percent by 1028 GMT, underperforming the Oslo bourse's 0.8 percent rise and a 1.1 percent rise for European technology shares.” The site further reveals that “in spite of the early fall, the stock is still up over 12 percent in the last week, at close to a three-year high, giving it a market capitalization of about $544 million.”
Getting back to our main issue here – the new service – it doesn’t look bad at all and has indeed the potential to make a difference for the Opera's browser altogether.
There are currently some sharing services for images and media integrated into the browser but the company has also let the platform open for anyone interested in building their own sharing services.
Phillip Gronvold, product analyst at Opera reaffirmed: "We believe it is the revolution of the Internet. We see this as a disruptive technology for Internet services in the next one to five years."
At present Opera the third most used browser in the world (having approximately 40 million users) – however, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Foundation's Firefox are way ahead so it remains to be seen if the latest innovation will bring Opera closer to its main competitors.
