A Japanese software company is stepping up international promotion of its web browse. Fenrir hopes that its Sleipnir could carve out a 5 percent share of the browser market over the next few years, a tall order in a world dominated by Microsoft and Mozilla.

The Sleipnir browser is well-known among Japanese geeks, many of whom value the high level of customisation that the browser allows. At the centre of this customisation is the ability to select either the Trident or Gecko layout engines for each site visited. Trident was developed by Microsoft and is used in Internet Explorer while Gecko is used in Mozilla’s Firefox.

In Japan the browser has a 9 percent market share, according to Fenrir. No independent data to verify that claim is available but a recent survey of 3,003 computer programmers published by Nikkei ITpro put Sleipnir’s share at 6 percent among that group.

Initially the focus is on the English-speaking market but Fenrir has plans to look at other language versions including Spanish and French.

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