Opera is launching a designated, web-based mobile app store today, called the Opera Mobile Store. The store will be a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers.
The Opera Mobile Store is actually powered by Appia (formerly PocketGear), which recently shifted its business model to providing white label mobile app stores for providers. For now, Opera will offers both free and paid applications for a variety of mobile platforms and devices, including Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems .
The storefront experience is customized to each user’s device, providing a tailored catalog based on the phone’s OS, local language and currency. Opera Software has also launched the Opera Publisher Portal, which allows developers to submit apps to the mobile storefront.
Opera says that 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. Clearly this is a big win for Appia, which now powers app stores for world’s top five handset manufacturers (Samsung, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless) as well as Opera.
Opera’s iPhone app and mobile browser continues to grow in terms of usage, especially outside of the U.S. It makes sense for Opera to offer a mobile app store for its browser but I’m curious to see how much traction the store will get with the proliferation of app stores nowadays.
Norway-based Opera provides web browsers for the desktop, mobile, and other electronics such as the Wii. It also provides a service called Opera Link that lets you access bookmarks across devices. Opera is an independent Scandinavian company that’s been in the business of making web browsers since 1994. Our founders saw the internet as a way of making information free and available to everyone in the world, regardless of where they lived or how they got online. Ever since then, one...
Appia is the world’s largest open app marketplace and white label storefront platform, supporting all operating systems and handsets. Ranked #15 on the Wall Street Journal’s 2011 list of Top 50 Venture-backed companies, Appia powers app storefronts for partners reaching more than 300 million mobile subscribers in 175 countries. Partners include Vodafone, Vodacom South Africa, Zedge, Myxer and Samsung. The Appia Developer Program provides partners with a ready to launch catalog of over 140,000 paid and free apps from...
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