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Opera 10 hits 10 million downloads in first week

Opera has said its Turbo-boosted browser has been downloaded 10 million times in the past week.

By Dave Neal, 8 Sep 2009 at 11:09

Opera's latest browser, Opera 10 with added Turbo, has been downloaded 10 million times in its first week of release.

Today the firm said that this represented record download rates and suggested that the browser, which has a number of interesting new features, was already being used by millions of worldwide users.

The Turbo feature is designed to boost connection speed in low-coverage areas or when only low bandwidth is present and it is this that may appeal to many users.

"Low bandwidth is a universal factor in multiple browsing situations, for example, on a train, in a hotel or in areas with limited connectivity. With the launch of Opera 10 with Turbo, Opera has pointedly addressed the needs of web users when browsing on slow or congested networks," explained the firm.

When the browser was launched at the start of September, Opera said it could boost speeds by up to eight times, when compared against other similar applications.

Other new features included better use of tabs and other user-customisation options.

“While we have consistently grown in our download rates with each consecutive launch, Opera 10 has far exceeded any previous record we had,” said Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive at Opera Software, in a statement.

“To us, this means that Opera 10 delivers a more compelling reason to choose Opera, and that reason is Opera Turbo. The concept of turbo browsing was the result of our One Web initiative, as our goal is to ensure that web browsing is fast, efficient and universal, anytime, anywhere.”