Report: Opera workforce shrinks 10% with migration to WebKit

More than 90 Opera Software employees have exited the browser maker's ranks as it shifts from its own Presto rendering engine to WebKit, a move to increase its competitiveness on Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android and Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS.

Digi.no first reported on the staff changes, which have trimmed the Opera workforce from 931 full-time employees to 840, a reduction of about 10 percent. Software developers account for about half of all staffers who left the company, with the remainder coming from segments including marketing and sales. Opera said that the job losses were voluntary redundancies rather than involuntary layoffs, with all who resigned offered support and severance packages.

Last week, Opera announced it will make a "gradual transition" to WebKit in order "to provide a leading browser on Android and iOS." Opera additionally will support V8 as its JavaScript engine and will contribute to the open-source Chromium framework project. Opera Vice President of Communications Nils Broström told Ars Technica that embracing WebKit means the firm can "put our clever people on developing end user benefits and innovations rather than developing and maintaining our own core." Opera will preview its first WebKit-powered Android browser later this month at the Mobile World Congress 2013 event.

More than 300 million consumers worldwide now use Opera's browsers each month across all platforms. Last week, the company acquired rival mobile browser maker Skyfire Labs in a cash and stock deal that could be worth as much as $155 million. Skyfire for iPhone allows consumers to run Adobe Flash-based content, working around Apple's restrictions on the Flash runtime by translating video content into the HTML5 Web standard.

Skyfire also offers Rocket Optimizer, a cloud-based solution that automatically reduces the size of video and multimedia content to fit the available bandwidth, promising mobile operators a 60 percent boost in network capacity, as well as Skyfire Horizon, a mobile browser extension and toolbar platform enabling carriers to integrate recommendations, promotions and advertising.

For more:
- read this Ars Technica article
- read this Next Web article

Related articles:
Opera acquires mobile browser rival Skyfire Labs for up to $155 million
Opera begins shift to WebKit engine as browser users top 300M
Opera introduces pay-as-you-go mobile Web access
Opera overhauls Android browser with new fraud detection system
Opera mobile browser users top 200 million worldwide