The Cool Factor
Mozilla Firefox is both popular in America, as in Europe. How come this little simple browser did something Opera only dreams of for a decade? Well, one of those elements might be the Cool Factor. The what? The Cool Factor.
Does Microsoft, Dell or Intel turn you on? Do you get fuzzy feelings inside? Heh, no, well you shouldn't ;) These are real corporations, commercial companies, who deliver great products, but are of such general proportion that they don't need a cool factor. Opera Software is also a company, and being Norwegian doesn't help much. Will Opera ever be cool? Probably not, I mean, thinking of a fat lady with a helmet on with wings doesn't really create excitement in your shorts. Although only furry fans will get turned on by a Firefox, they really did some cool things. Firefox has a cool logo, a firefox with a globe, colorful and symbolic. It's not a boring font with characters. And Firefox is open-source, a good buzzword, and symbolizes freedom in a way, in a world controlled more and more by companies and governments.
But the Cool Factor has a limit. No matter how cool it is, coolness is limited to a range of age. No doubt this is the youth, teenagers, students and young men and women. But is this a real danger? Well if you market at only such a range of people, it might look like your growth stalls, but remember young people get older, but still use your product! And they're a good way to spread the word, it can't be denied that Firefox gave an impact on the world, whether you use it or not. Firefox is known, and that's a very important step.
But besides the Cool Factor, Firefox is simply a good product. Their challenges may be persuading companies to use it, but if you can persuade the system administrator, you're already close. Since Firefox is technologically superior to Internet Explorer, we web developers are fond of it, and most people who already embracced open-source on their desktops are quite easy triggered to use and keep using Firefox.
Where does Opera aim on? On the desktop, well it's a polished product with support. So it's for those who simply want web browser, open-source is nice, but isn't the major concern. Also coolness isn't important, though it is helpful, as you won't persuade anyone, it's not a hyped product. Currently from personal experiences, people do often use Opera, simply because it's on their mobile. Yeah, a very different approach. Although it well help a bit, it won't be persuading enough to gain 10% marketshare.
So what now? What approach would be the good way? Marketshare to the very least is important, to have some influence on web developments. But that means becoming big on the market. How can this be done, 10 years of nothing, what is the way? Can Opera Software acquire the Cool Factor or are there other, perhaps even better, ways to get a bigger marketshare.?
Firefox is cool yeah, but just because of its awfull flashy teenage logo style, I ll never stand that on my toolbar, and Opera will remain here (This proud and shadowed red O is so classy, isn't it ? ;)
Well, although the opinions on the Firefox logo differ, it's apparent that the creator drew a fox on fire, while a firefox is a red panda bear ;)
Opera's red O-logo is simple, but professional for a classy corporate product and it works well as an icon. Considering everyone recognizes the red O as Opera's logo, either as big size logo or icon, it does serve its purpose.
But marketing for coolness requires flashy images and cool lines of text, thus I suggest to focus on a My Opera Community version of Opera's download and features page, and pull the younger generation (but older as well) to their community site, rather than their corporate site.
I thought the red O was the logo of Overstock.com!
You write "Since Firefox is technologically superior to Internet Explorer, we web developers are fond of it," which I don't believe should just be cited as a common fact. I think it would be prudent of you to write something more along the lines of "[...]superior to Internet Explorer (≤6) in areas such as w3c standards compliance and Secunia advisories." I don't believe it has been commonly established that FF is "technologically superior" to IE, as such terminology is very general and enveloping (I could argue several qualities in which I feel IE (6) is "technologically superior" to FF, but would still refrain from saying that one is entirely superior to the other in all cases).
That said, I generally agree with the rest of your post. I'm slightly dubious about whether the fact that FF is opensource actually has much to due with its widespread success (considering the bulk of the [non-csci] population arguably doesn't fully grasp the concept of opensource, or really care past the fact that it's free). You do emphasize that it's a "buzzword," though, I think that while it assuredly comes up in nearly every article about FF, Alice is rather unlikely to mention it to Bob, when recommending that he download it.
To be honest, I think its popularity stems from right place right time situation. It's 'cool' that FireFox is faster than IE, since it doesn't have the six toolbars that Alice accidentally clicked yes to install, and just lives with them rather than uninstalling them. It's now 'cool' since Bob and Cathy (and everyone else) are doing it. Maybe it's even 'cool' since it has the letter 'x' in the name (so do the words xbox, extreme, and sex). (Heh, maybe they should release Opera X! ... P.S. Please don't.)
I believe IE has been holding on well in corporations who run almost exclusively MS shops. MS servers, domains, exchange, windows, outlook, word, excel, access, IE ... some admins are indoctrinated by MS, others (appropriately) recognize that most of these products are very good, others (many, I think) have web applications that are coded to work exclusively with IE, but largely, I believe, domain administration (and deployment) for IE and updates is (last time I checked) miles ahead of FF. (Not to mention how 'cool' it is to NOT have to migrate an entire company away from something that's not really broken. This is why there are still tons of NT servers/clients, still tons of dos applications, exchange ≤ 5 servers, etc.)
I don't know if "they" care, or if it'd pay off, but I could see Opera gaining some corporate backing by developing a robust domain administration (and customization/deployment) package. Although unlikely, if [tens/hundreds of] thousands of employees were exposed to Opera at the workplace, it seems probable they'd switch at home, recommend it to friends, etc.
At this point, I'm not going to deploy Opera or FF to my corporate users (for several of the reasons above), but I'll still recommend Opera to almost any friend. I personally think it's 'cool' that Opera just does what I want out of the box, without having to go search for an extension to do mouse gestures and half a dozen other things, and then pick between a dozen options for each ... and Opera does them well. I think it's 'cool' how fast Opera is. I think it's 'cool' that I can so easily re-open a tab I've closed. I think it's 'cool' that I can easily zoom/unzoom a page. I think it's 'cool' that Opera lets me display it in the native (classic) windows appearance (this is getting harder and harder to find these days, much to my chagrin ... though probably not a huge winner with the general masses). Do I use Opera because it's 'cool?' No. I use it because I really like it, and I think it does its stuff very well. I think that's a huge difference between FF and Opera.
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