Opera Mobile Store Launches, Everybody Welcome (Except Apple)

Opera has expanded their company by opening a new app store.  This app store will be available across a wide range of mobile platforms and phones. This universal app store will soon be available from Amazon, but Opera was just faster on the trigger.

The Opera App Store currently has apps for Android, Palm, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Java provided by Appia. The iOS on the iPhone is noticeably absent, but may be added in future updates. I am sure this initial absence is simply due to pending agreement with Apple and has nothing to do with the “Mature” rating the Opera Mini browser received in the Apple App Store.

The current crop of apps offered by Opera’s App Store are mostly free junk, but this is always the case with the first listings of any app store.  For those that decide to use Opera App Store, I expect better and more useful apps in the near future.

As always, the Opera web browser (my personal browser of choice) is available for download (unironically from Apple App Store and Android App Store) and use on just about everything. Opera currently has versions that work with Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and practically every phone that has the ability to install new applications.

[hide-this-part morelink=”Full Press Release”]Opera launches the Opera Mobile Store, available in over 200 Countries

Oslo, Norway – March 8, 2011

Opera Software, the leading provider of mobile browsers around the world, today announced that the Opera Mobile Store is now open and available at mobilestore.opera.com. This storefront is a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, which makes the storefront immediately accessible by more than 100 million people who use an Opera browser on their mobile phones. The Opera Mobile Store has been built and delivered through a strategic partnership with Appia, the leading provider of open application marketplace technology. The Opera Mobile Store offers both free and paid applications for virtually any mobile platform and device. The Opera Mobile Store is available to Opera users and users of other mobile browsers, on all popular mobile phone platforms in more than 200 countries. The Opera Mobile Store uses Appia’s storefront commerce technology and leverages a wide catalog of applications for phones with Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems. The storefront experience is customized to each user’s phone, providing a tailored catalog based on the phone’s operating system, local language and currency.

“The launch of the Opera Mobile Store supports Opera’s core belief in an open, cross-platform mobile Internet experience by providing Opera users with an integrated storefront of mobile applications,” said Mahi de Silva, EVP, Consumer Mobile, Opera Software. “Our partnership with Appia delivers to all Opera Mobile and Opera Mini users easy access to a wide variety of great content, on any device, all over the world.”

To support the Opera Mobile Store, Opera Software has also launched the Opera Publisher Portal, providing developers with an easy way to get their applications onto the Opera Mobile Store and in front of millions of Opera users every month. In its pre-launch state, the Opera Mobile Store attracted more than 15 million users in February, from 200 countries, achieving more than 700,000 downloads per day. These metrics establish the Opera Mobile Store as a top 10 mobile application store around the world.

“The Opera Mobile Store presents a remarkable opportunity for mobile application developers to distribute localized content through a single, far-reaching marketplace,” said Jud Bowman, CEO of Appia. “Appia is thrilled to partner with Opera to deliver an incredible storefront of applications to Opera users and beyond.”
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