Opera's low numbers in stats surprized people

Thursday, 28. December 2006, 15:50:42

Peter Gasston from CSS3.info surprised by quickly growing IE7 stats and still very low Opera stats:

One thing that struck me looking through all my stats was the tiny number of people using Opera - in many cases, none at all. Opera is a very good browser - fast, lightweight and standards-compliant; so why aren’t more people using it? I know in my case I rely on the Addons for Firefox; and I know from experience that most Mac users prefer Safari. But what’s stopping everyone else from using it?
Is it because it was paid-for or ad-supported for so long that people have got used to alternatives? Is it because it isn’t marketed well? I’d be interested to hear readers views on their reasons if they don’t use Opera.

Firechicken?US goverment site where Opera works but Firefox doesn't

Comments

I totally agree with your views Andrey. Most of my friends don't use Opera and the only reason I can think of is the resistance to change. People find hard to adapt to new things especially with computers. It is a human nature I guess but they will have to move to Opera some day if it maintains its benefits. Its just a matter of time.

By Mayur, # 12. April 2007, 10:09:54

i think some people are uncomfortable with the perceived design change. Opera just looks so different when you load it the first time and too many options might be intimidating to newbies. I was thinking that perhaps the Opera guys should let the brwoser load with a very minimal interface the first time and let users proceed from there.

By sayeed_salim, # 26. July 2007, 16:21:05

Opera 9 interface is very similar to oter browser and it is much clear from previous versions of Opera:

BTW, IE 7 has very uncommon interface:

So, I don't think that slightly different interface is a problem for new users.

By FataL, # 26. July 2007, 20:48:14

He he!!! Good point. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go look for another excuse!!!

By sayeed_salim, # 27. July 2007, 12:06:30

Although from what I read if you do a country by country break up then parts of Easter Europe have high percentages of Opera users. More tech savvy perhaps?

By sayeed_salim, # 27. July 2007, 12:08:35