Opera ranks among the top five mobile browsers by global market share, according to Statcounter.
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BEIJING — A niche web browser Opera plans to integrate ChatGPT into its Opera parent products Kunlun Tech announced on Wednesday.
No details were shared about timing or whether the features will be available across all Opera products — which include desktop and mobile browsers for iOS and Android.
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The news comes as Microsoft and Google this week announced plans to incorporate AI chatbot technology with its own search engines. ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, has gained popularity since its release in late November.
Google’s Chrome browser has the largest market share in the world at 65.4 percent, while Microsoft’s Edge browser has a 4.5 percent share, according to Statcounter data for January.
Opera ranks sixth in the global browser market with a 2.4 percent share, the data show.
Norway-based Opera, which also runs a browser specialized for games, had an average of 321 million monthly active users as of the third quarter. The company said its gaming browser business helped boost revenue in the third quarter, up 28% year over year to $85.3 million.
Parent company Kunlun Tech is based in Beijing and listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. In December, the company announced its work in an array of AI-generated content, such as music and images, to be made open source.
Shares of Kunlun Tech are up more than 40% for the year to date. Opera’s Nasdaq-listed shares are up just over 10% over that time period.
Many companies have been quick to announce their work in products similar to ChatGPT.
Chinese tech giant Baidu said this week that it will likely complete internal testing of its own AI chatbot in March before making the product publicly available.
Ali Baba is also working on a ChatGPT competitor, but did not disclose the timing.
It’s unclear how these new AI features would compare to ChatGPT’s capabilities.
When it comes to mobile search, Google has a whopping 96.5% share of the global market, while Baidu is second with a 0.7% share, according to Statcounter.