von Tetzchner vs Microsoft

[Andy Sjostrom]

<a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/21/microsoft_cellphone/index.html">http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/21/microsoft_cellphone/index.html</a><br /><br />Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and co-founder of Opera software, brings to Microsoft competitors in Symbian perhaps their strongest card: a common Web browser. This article, <a href="http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/21/microsoft_cellphone/index.html ">"Microsoft wants your cellphone"</a>, is an interesting read if you want to keep up with what competition tries to do to keep their platform together. Here's an interesting idea for you to ponder: what if Microsoft would build Pocket Internet Explorer for the popular Symbian flavors and:<br />a) ask competition not to integrate the browser into their phones or<br />b) ask competition to also bundle Pocket Internet Explorer with their phones<br />c) if a or b are refused, file a suit and team up with the DOJ...<br /><br />"By most accounts, Microsoft won the Web browser wars over Netscape. But if you ask Jon von Tetzchner how he can be sure that Opera's Web browser is better than Microsoft's, he'll look at you as if you've said something absurd. To von Tetzchner, the so-called browser war is just now heating up, and Microsoft has most certainly not won the contest. If you press him on the issue, he'll concede that Microsoft may enjoy a seemingly indomitable 90-plus percent share of the browser market -- but that's only on desktop computers, where Microsoft has an operating-system monopoly. On cellphones, where Microsoft and Opera will start off on a level playing field, Microsoft will have to compete on the merits of its software. And Opera will win out, von Tetzchner insists."

[enemy2k2]

I actually use Opera to do 95% of my browsing, the rest is done with Mozilla or IE - some sites don't work well with Opera at all. I had it loaded on my Mako when I had that as well, it was pretty neat and full featured. It could even zoom pages. I couldn't enjoy it on that terrible screen though, not to mention I really couldn't spare the memory to keep it on there.

[denivan]

Personally I wouldn't mind if Opera would win the mobile browser war. I use mostly IE on my desktop (sometimes Opera), but Microsoft has showed clearly that they are ignorant concerning the needs of us, mobile users. Why else would Pocket Internet Explorer be such a disaster ? So I chear to the competition, and hopefully Microsoft will learn out of this and will try to make PIE a bit better.

[enemy2k2]

Personally I wouldn't mind if Opera would win the mobile browser war. I use mostly IE on my desktop (sometimes Opera), but Microsoft has showed clearly that they are ignorant concerning the needs of us, mobile users. Why else would Pocket Internet Explorer be such a disaster ? So I chear to the competition, and hopefully Microsoft will learn out of this and will try to make PIE a bit better.

There's a catch with Opera though, it costs money:P On the desktop version you can use it for free though you have to put up with ads - they're not all that bad though. From what I can tell you about Opera on my Epoc machine is that it's extremely full featured, really like using a mini-laptop. I personally believed the hardware wasn't really up to the challenge though - sadly. I've heard bad things about PIE, hopefully PPC 2K3 will rectify this.

[Pony99CA]

Personally I wouldn't mind if Opera would win the mobile browser war. I use mostly IE on my desktop (sometimes Opera), but Microsoft has showed clearly that they are ignorant concerning the needs of us, mobile users. Why else would Pocket Internet Explorer be such a disaster ? So I chear to the competition, and hopefully Microsoft will learn out of this and will try to make PIE a bit better.
Remember when Internet Explorer sucked and Netscape had most of the market? How times have changed, with IE having 90+% now. I stayed using Netscape unless some site didn't work, but now I use Mozilla and love it (the built-in pop-up stopper got me to try it).

Anyway, if Microsoft ever feels threatened, don't think for a minute that they can't improve Pocket IE. In fact, I recall reading that Windows CE .NET will include a version compatible with IE 5.5 (whatever that means :-)).

Steve

[Mike Wagstaff]

So, when does Opera for the Pocket PC come out? I'd like a fit-to-screen option that actually works... ;)

[Johan]

[quote="Andy Sjostrom"]http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/11/21/microsoft_cellphone/index.html

Jon von Tetzchner, CEO and co-founder of Opera software, brings to Microsoft competitors in Symbian perhaps their strongest card: a common Web browser. ....

Question is when will M$ purchase Thunderhawk......... :wink: This one rocks, but cost to much as an annual fee. Using a special server to prepare the pages for the mobile unit, making pages look better and suck up less of your GPRS MB:s.

Best regards,

Johan

[Landis]

I think if you're going to charge for a web browser, a Thunderhawk-like reformatting service is the way to go on wireless devices. Need to get the price down to about $20/year though.

[Kirkaiya]

a) ask competition not to integrate the browser into their phones or
b) ask competition to also bundle Pocket Internet Explorer with their phones
c) if a or b are refused, file a suit and team up with the DOJ...


or - none of the above... I know that those points were partly in jest, but... here I go again:

Since no single mobile phone maker has a monopoly on the market, you couldn't really go after them easily. Since Opera clearly doens't have a monopoly anywhere in anything (they're just a tiny thing), I don't think anti-trust laws apply there as well.

Antitrust laws apply to Monopolies, and how they compete. For good or for bad, the laws are designed to prevent a company that *already* owns a market from unfairly preventing others from competing in that market (or form leveraging their monoply to unfairly compete in other markets).

I don't think the laws apply to a group of companies that jointly decide on another vendor's product (I'm not a lawyer, so it's just my 2 cents....)

That is - if Opera themselves had a monopoly on cellphones (or the OS that runs them, I guess), and could therefore dictate what browser was put in, you might have a case. People might argue now that Nokia and the other european makers are an "oligopily", but Motorola is an American company, and doesn't use Symbian (that I know of), and Samsung is Korean, and I haven't seen any of their phones with Symbian either.

So anyway - while I love PPC, and I really like the smartphone, I definitely don't want MSFT to "own" that market - they do their best work when facing stiff competition (remember the leap from CE 2.11 to PPC? That was because of Palm).

[jet8810]

I use Opera (free with ads) on my PC and it kicks IE's butt! Opera for PPC would be very interesting...

[szamot]

Maybe your IE will be singing Opera one day, remember this - it you can't beat them - buy them. Everything is for sale and everthing has its price and MS pockets are very very deep. Greed on the other had is very basic, I would not be surpriced if Opera sold out.

[Kirkaiya]

Maybe your IE will be singing Opera one day, remember this - it you can't beat them - buy them. Everything is for sale and everthing has its price and MS pockets are very very deep. Greed on the other had is very basic, I would not be surpriced if Opera sold out.

Now this is sooooo true - the last I read, Microsoft had about 41 Billion (BILLION!!!) dollars in cash reserves - a good bit of their revenue comes from interest on their pile-o-money...

Lets hope they don't cast the all-seeing eye over to the fiords of Finland (or is it Norway? Wherever Opera is based, anyway), lol. I do hope that some CE-based SmartPhones start making their way here, I'm eager to play with one, and see how I likez it.

[Jason Dunn]

I read somewhere (can't remember where) that the Opera guys stated publicly that they will never develop Opera for any Microsoft Mobile platform - it's their way of holding a grudge I guess. :?

I too would LOVE to see a better browser - Pocket Internet Explorer leaves SO much to be desired...you can't even click the back button and have it load from the cache - my XDA re-connects to GPRS when I click the back button. 8O

[Mike Wagstaff]

Pocket Internet Explorer leaves SO much to be desired...you can't even click the back button and have it load from the cache - my XDA re-connects to GPRS when I click the back button
I think it depends on the site - sometimes my xda does need to connect, and other times it doesn't. I suspect it's to do with whether the site in question is linking to a resource stored elsewhere. Either way, however, it's annoying.

[szamot]

I was under the impression that this is exactly the kind of issue .NET would solve. On the fly content send out to a device based on its capabilities, but that’s just coming.

Hummmm, NEVER is not a very long time in the grand scheme of things. While I admire their moral principles, hurray for Opera, the fact of the matter is that moral principles have no place in the modern market place. If it did we certainly would never be able to buy anything that’s bad for us, the customer, like coke or chips our poorly made tires etc. Business is driven by greed, or is that profit I can’t never tell the difference between the two. So while their stance is certainly admirable it has little to zero business sense. I guess time will only tell.

[enemy2k2]

I think Opera is betting that they can become a larger and more profitable company through Symbian than it could if it developed for MS products. Opera's tune may just change if MS did approach them in some manner with a nice healthy offer. For now though they have too much vested in Symbian. My Diamond Mako (Psion Revo Plus), well... former Diamond Mako had actually come with an earlier version of Opera on the CD. If anything, this will at least cause MS to notice that PIE is lacking, competition always brings out the best in products :D

[Jonathan1]

Tried Opera. Liked the interface and some of its options but uninstalled it. It doesn't format many pages correctly (pocketpcpassion and pocketpcthoughts are 2 sites that come to mind.), mainly Affront Page sites. Thanks MS.) or forgets to load some images in web pages and you have a nice red X for an image.

Tried Mozilla. Did a pretty good job of screwing up my machine. For some reason some of the apps that I use would no longer open up a web browser when you did certain functions in them. Even after uninstalling and reinstalling the apps...no joy. Uninstalled Mozilla. Still nothing. I ended up redoing the computer. Will not use Mozilla again EVER.

I may consider Opera simply because I don't feel like having a web page format my hard drive thank you very much. :P

MS should be slapped up side the head for all the security holes he has. It really is a terrible pile of insecure crap but people use it and accept the holes. Is that sort of like driving a car that has a gas leak near the exhaust? You are making good time in your Porsche..that is until it blows up in your face. :P :wink:

[szamot]

MS should be slapped up side the head for all the security holes he has. It really is a terrible pile of insecure crap but people use it and accept the holes. Is that sort of like driving a car that has a gas leak near the exhaust? You are making good time in your Porsche..that is until it blows up in your face. :P :wink:

I like the car stories. I was goning to say that Opera is in the starting grid sitting on its high moral horse while everyone is reving up their F1 cars, but mainly MS. Thanks for playing.

[ThomasC22]

Anyway, if Microsoft ever feels threatened, don't think for a minute that they can't improve Pocket IE. In fact, I recall reading that Windows CE .NET will include a version compatible with IE 5.5 (whatever that means :-)).


Sadly, they may very well not be able to improve it (at least not at the same rate). This is for a couple reasons:

1) When IE took the lead from Netscape they were a division in and of themselves (it was at the time that MS turned around and created an Internet Division under then Exec. Vice President Brad Silverberg). They were given the mandate to beat Netscape at all costs, and they also had control of the Windows Shell. This allowed them to move fast and have everything they needed under their control. That's why you saw IE come out with 3 or 4 versions per year for a while.

Now they are under the platforms group and under current Exec. Vice President Jim Allchin who has always believed that IE should be (A) closely tied to Windows (e.g. the old guard considered IE a program in and of itself while the current considers it a piece of Windows) and (B) be on a platform product cycle (which is a new product every couple years). This structure inhibits Microsoft's ability to compete with Opera (which is in effect a startup).

2) Those Microsoft staff members that engineered IE's take over are largely gone (most to Ignition Partners (http://www.ignitionpartners.com/home.asp)). There very well may be others at Microsoft now that could pull off the same trick but the fact remains those who did it before are gone.

As for MS buying Opera, I believe Opera is privately held so if they won't even build a browser for Microsoft Platforms I doubt they will be willing to sell the company to them.

[Certified Optimist]

Lets hope they don't cast the all-seeing eye over to the fiords of Finland (or is it Norway? Wherever Opera is based, anyway), lol. I do hope that some CE-based SmartPhones start making their way here, I'm eager to play with one, and see how I likez it.

Sorry mate... But Opera is from Norway - the land of the fjords (Norway that is not Opera). Finland is the land of a thousand lakes (and no fjords there I am afraid).

And Sweden is the land of beautiful women :wink: