Opera announced today that its browsers are now used by more than 100 million people worldwide, saying that the distribution between mobile and desktop users is a nearly even split at 50 million a piece.
While 50 million desktop users means just a tiny fraction of the browser market for home users, 50 million mobile users actually represents a dominance in the mobile browser market.
According to the latest numbers by StatCounter, Opera for the desktop comes in fifth (essentially last) place, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Opera accounts for just under 2% of the browser market, while IE holds 53% of the market share, and Firefox comes in around 32%. Safari, Opera’s nearest competitor (and default Mac browser) accounts for twice as many users as Opera.
Looking at the mobile browser numbers, on the other hand, we see Opera Mini with 28% and iPhone’s native browser following with just under 20%. And all of that could change, of course, if Apple would just accept Opera Mini into the AppStore. Opera submitted its mobile browser just under three weeks ago at the time of this writing, but has a policy that prevents other browsers from operating on the iPhone.
While the numbers seem to say that Opera just isn’t cutting it on the desktop, Opera Mini has been holding the lead as far as mobile browsing goes and we’d sure love to see it on the iPhone sometime in the near future.
