There are a lot of aspects to keep in mind and it is a hard way not to use strong marketing actions for a commensurable increase in market share. Operas way has ever been mostly to be better in technical terms, however IE's market share and the Lessons from the Browser Wars are strong signs that technical leadership is only a weak point towards higher market share. Alike the hype about Firefox is more about media driven marketing towards the likeable open source software than the respectable work of the developers (ie it is not the effect of the one big ad in the newspaper but of the many reports about that ad and its volunteer financing).
But I strongly believe I have some good points to increase the market share of Opera without advertisement driven marketing and thus within the philosophy of Opera ASA. And I don't count on an Opera hype.
My five strategic points are:
- focus end-user – this point is about keeping the technical leadership for the best internet experience
- focus web-designers – they are responsible for pages working in Opera and can make more webpages work in Opera
- focus be open & first choice – use Opera for different reasons
- find Opera in different places – use Opera because it is just there
- focus www.opera.com – as business card for the Opera products it should deliver the best internet experience as well
I will explain one after another in the following posts.
Originally I wanted to increase the market share by 10% six months after the release of the new version in my responsibility (which will need at least one year from now) as product manager for desktop Opera. After some more time seeing the topic with the special focus towards market share and checking the single points I now think 10% has been too tough to be reached without advertisement and without external effects. Well, I think the following points are enough for maybe 5-6% – what would be an enormous growth already. And I don't think that Opera could not get higher by any technical improvement.
