Less than a month after it was first
reported, Opera Software has now publicly announced that in addition to the launch of a new browser for Android and iOS, it will make a gradual transition to the WebKit engine, as well as Chromium, for most of its upcoming versions of browsers for smartphones and computers. The company also announced that it will showcase the Android version of its smartphone browser, which is based on WebKit, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, this month.
"The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need," said CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie. "It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout."
Opera also said that it is experimenting with WebKit in several research and development projects, and 'ICE' was just one among them. Lie added that the company will provide more information about ICE and other R&D projects in the future, but it will majorly focus on Android and its Opera Web Pass operator offering at the MWC.
The company also announced that it has reached 300 million monthly users across all its browser products on phones, tablets, TVs and computers.
It is noteworthy that, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari web browsers also use WebKit, which offers better rendering compatibility with websites and faster browsing when compared to Presto, the rendering engine developed and used by Opera on its desktop browsers.
Presently, Opera offers the Opera Mini browser on Android, iOS, and other mobile platforms, with the iOS version being based on server side rendering in the cloud. Opera's been banking on its USP of data compression through which it allows users to access websites on slow GPRS/Edge connections, consuming lesser data.