Opera Mobile Store Launches

Opera Software has announced the release of the Opera Mobile Store, available at mobilestore.opera.com.

The browser maker's new storefront is now open and is a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. This makes the storefront immediately accessible by more than 100 million people who use an Opera browser on their mobile phones.

Company officials said the Opera Mobile Store was built and delivered through a strategic partnership with Appia, a provider of open application marketplace technology.

“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, executive vice president of the consumer mobile business at Opera Software, in a statement. “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.”

The Opera Mobile Store offers both free and paid applications for virtually any mobile platform and device, Opera officials said. 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.

Moreover, 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.

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, Opera said in a press release on the new store. 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, the company said. 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, in a statement. “Appia is thrilled to partner with Opera to deliver an incredible storefront of applications to Opera users and beyond.”