Recent release of 'Opera 9' with widgets is a big hit.
Widgets lets you work with many information applications right from your desktop without having to use the web browser, quickly gaining popularity to be next generation platform , and is driving domestic market to improve widgets service to attract new users and to satisfy existing users.

According to CNET's News.com, Opera Software released its latest version browser 'Opera 9' and set new records with more than 1 million downloads in just 2 days showing the big popularity among the net users.

Opera 9, available as free download and its ability to run on multiplatform including Linux, Mac and Windows with revolutionizing new features are drawing much attention. the new features of the Opera 9 browser includes BitTorrent, widgets, customized searches, site preferences, thumbnail preview, content blocking, trashcan and popup blocking.

Opera's CEO Jon von Tetzchner said "We put our effort to supercede far beyond what web browser users anticipate for new features." These newly added features were aimed to support users for more easy, convenient web browsing and especially the widgets is intergrated more into search engines in domestic portals.

Why are portals offering various widgets services?
Widgets is a relatively a small web program that lets the user to personalize its browser settings and to check out games, sports scores, weather and time is a breeze (without having to depend on the web browser. It's gaining more popularity with array of clock designs and system utilities.

'Web Cam' is one of the fastest growing Widgets applications. It offers traffic info or live traffic shots in intervals or in real-time. There are also World Cup widgets, Torino Winter Olympic widgets, and many of events are being promoted with widgets.

Yahoo! Korea first started the widgets services in domestic market last October and introduced the 3.1-upgraded version very recently. The newer version reduces memory usages down to 1/5 of previous version and bundled RSS capability. Yahoo! Korea opened a special blog just for the widgets and is trying to further popularize the widget community.

Daum Communications also offers widgets based multimedia messenger 'Touch' In addition to basic features like clock, calendar, weather, dictionary, calculator, it offers video/audio chatting, gigantic 100GB of storage space (linked to its communities) for uploading and downloading files.

Naver also is testing the market with its 'Naver Desktop' offering services like search engine, mail, blog, cafe with information links to daily chores, messenger that are tailored to desktop operations. 'Naver Desktop' is unique. It can search in both web and within the PC.

Dreamwiz joined in the party with introduction of its 'Wizcat' on the 16th. The Wizcat offers
one browser that can handle web-browsing, mail, RSS, news, and music as a convenient feature. Specially without having to install outlook express, it lets you check POP3 mails and 27 domestic web mails without even connecting to the web sites.

The reason for all these widget-based services the major portals are running in the domestic market is to lure in more visitors and further increase their customer base.

Widgets' communicative tool and vast information services are aiming to that special group of people to bring forth individual services portals have been pushing. It could bring 'Win Win' situation for the portals in terms of retaining existing loyal members and more opportunities to gain new members.

Portals in dilemma, an escape-go?
Actually, the widget can disrupt the web browser based existing business structures. Most portals are providing widget related services to keep in line with other competitors but in actuality, they are hesitating to go with full marketing campaigns due to that reason.

For instance, using widget, users can check the weather report right from the desktop without visiting the weather site. And that can cut down the visitors to the site and number of page view will decline and therefore ad banners won't be seen by the users. In addition, users can delete the sponsoring links and modify to their own preference when accessing search engines.

According to online surveyor 'KoreanClick' Naver Desktop who leads the market with most members, weekly unique users were up to 180,000 in the beginning stage of the service but it is down to under 100,000 currently, indicating the lack of marketing and commercializing the program. Domestic widgets service has the long road ahead.

However as it was mentioned beforehand, even with the risk of self cannibalization, portals have no choice but to accept the widget lead individualized desktop trends. Therefore, the portals should concentrate not only to bring in more visitors to their sites but should consider making it as one of the main business model.

Unlike the 'Konfabulator' program sold to consumers as B2C model in early framing of widgets, the industry should take further steps to create new applications that can bring synergy effect. Like Yahoo's Honda Ad that is running currently. The ad has links to yahoo's music video within the Honda ad, not to mention the ad's appealing desktop appearance as an accessory.

In other areas, away from the desktop applications, wire/wireless unified platform service from MiniGate (www.minigate.net) 'Mobile Widgets Miniple 2.0' is also getting attention. It's widget service for the upcoming Wibro and LAN devices' commercial services. The company president Hoon Chung said "We will put much effort to standardize this service in wire/wireless mobile market."

In recent, not only in widgets but also in toolbars and desktop search engine applications getting the attention from the major portals. The current trend demands more widgets in individualized applications and it's quickly becoming as a killer application out there on the market. All major competing portals are getting in line not to lack behind. What's left now is to create a successful business model for themselves. Yahoo! Korea's Widgets project manager Jee-Sun Shin said "The success of widgets will largely depend on how much it will be received as the popular program by the users and public alike."