Interview: Opera Software CEO And Co-Founder Jon S. von Tetzchner

Norwegian browser firm Opera Software (OSL: OPERA) reported fourth quarter earnings Monday. Total revenues were up 48 percent year on year, with Opera Desktop revenues jumping 103 percent compared to Q4 2006 and Opera Mobile revenues climbing 37 percent compared to last year. Opera made news last week when it replaced its old search partner Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) with Google (NSDQ: GOOG), making it the default search box on the start page of its popular mobile browser Mini. The deal—a straight-up distribution agreement—generated lots of headlines of Opera "dumping" Yahoo, prompting the beleaguered search firm to issue a statement saying, "Yahoo has elected not to continue its mobile search partnership with Opera at this time," implying they had been the ones to do the dumping. Such is the growing clout of Opera Mini, that the two biggest web search firms see it as a prime outlet. By the company's account Mini has been downloaded by 35 million people who actually use it. It has also been shipped on some 100 million handsets worldwide..

mocoNews caught up with Opera Software CEO and co-founder Jon S. von Tetzchner to ask him about the burgeoning mobile web, where Opera's products fit in, and how he sees the future shaping up. The interview covers everything from their recent news to partner with Google, to the business model behind both their mobile and desktop browsers, to their EC antitrust complaint against Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Internet Explorer, plus lots more. The excerpted version of the interview follows, but you can read the complete interview here.

-- On going with Google for mobile search: "What we're always trying to do is to look for the best possible experience. When we made the switch from Google to Yahoo [in January 2007] that was the argument at the time and when we made the switch back to Google it was the same argument. I can't go into the deal, but obviously revenues are a part of this, but it has to be said that our big focus is actually finding the best partners to work with and providing the best solution. We could potentially have found someone who would have paid even more than either of those two, but we're trying to go with best of breed at any one time."

-- On the business model behind Opera Mini: "We generate revenues through deals like with Google and other parties. We try to populate the front page of Opera Mini with services that we believe our end users will like and that we can generate revenue from, and that includes the choice of search but also potentially other services. For example, with games firm Greystripe."

-- On generating additional revenue with mobile ads: (Note: Opera has the technical ability to place ads on any mobile web page). "It's something that we could do, but we would never do anything that pisses off our users. We want to get as many users as possible and we will be very careful with introducing any services that will intimidate users in any way. We are always trying to look for ways we can do something that our end users will see as a feature that we can generate revenue from. If we can do that, it's optimal." The mobile advertising option where we add things [ads]--that's not something that we'd like to do.

-- On the notion that mobile browsers aren't yet up to scratch: "Most of those [negative] tests on the mobile internet were done looking at WAP, so I don't feel hit by that comment. We are seeing 100,000 new downloads of Mini per day through our own distribution and word of mouth. That tells me a lot of people like our products and tell their friends. We have to be doing something right, and we are always looking at ways to improve the product.

-- On Opera Desktop and how it will fare next to the more popular Opera Mini: "We see all of these working together. If you see what's happened in 2007, the fourth quarter numbers are not out yet, but those three quarters we had very significant growth in end users and revenues in the desktop and we aim to continue down that path. We are finding our desktop users quite often try our other products and similarly people that download Mini or Mobile may well start to use our desktop product. So this is kind of helping build our overall brand. It is a question of getting people to try it out. (Opera reported in its earnings out today that Q4 saw revenues from its desktop browser jump 103 percent year on year). This year we are putting significant investment into the desktop browser. We've also been working a little bit on tweaking some of the deals that we've been doing with partners, so overall that has been helping us as well." (Opera Desktop strikes distribution deals with companies such as Google and Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) who want to appear on the browser's start page, as well as revenue sharing deals.)

-- On Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) with the European Commission: "Obviously we wouldn't have filed if we didn't believe we had a good case. Microsoft has been doing two things: One thing they've been doing is including the browser with the operating system and having consumers pay more. They included the browser and increased the price of the operating system. The second thing is that they've been limiting choice on the platforms by not implementing web standards—which they were very involved in creating. By [not adhering to standards] they basically created an alternative web standard which its not well defined and makes it extremely difficult for web designer. The side effect of that, because Explorer has such a big market share, web designers code mostly for it. We know that when people download our browser and visit a site coded only for IE that doesn't work in Opera, we lose that user. That's a significant problem. We want competition to be based on how good your programs are and not on who owns the standards. That's not the way it should work; there are well-defined web standards, and Microsoft programmers are quite intelligent and totally able to implement them, so I don't really know why they shouldn't. Obviously we do believe we have a strong product and with a more level playing ground we believe our market share would be higher."

-- On Opera's future: "We feel we're getting the message through that on the mobile you also have the same internet [as the wired web].  The next level is to have people understand that there is world outside mobiles and desktops including the Nintendo wii, including television, including all kinds of players, and connecting all those together is something that is very exciting. We're already delivering on the Nintendo Wii, the Nintendo DS, on Archos media players, on Sony (NYSE: SNE) televisions, on plug in boxes, set top boxes, barcode readers, and on shopping terminals, and in-flight entertainment systems. Everything is becoming web-based everywhere."

Related

• Opera Dumps Yahoo For Google


• Browser Maker Opera Files EC Complaint Against Microsoft