Opera Software has announced the expansion of its U.S. operations with a new office in Silicon Valley.
Officials with the Oslo, Norway-based software maker known for its browsers said commuters on Silicon Valley’s US 101 highway will notice a large new Opera logo atop a shiny office building in San Mateo, Calif.
Opera Software’s new and improved visibility is a reflection of the company’s growing success in the mobile ecosystem and its expansion in Silicon Valley-opening a new 20,000-square-foot office, employing more than 100 people, with plans for aggressive growth for the rest of 2012 and beyond. These new offices are now home to Opera Software’s subsidiaries, AdMarvel and Mobile Theory, as well as Opera’s U.S. branch office.
In the past year, Opera has further increased its position in the mobile browser market, surpassing more than 200 million monthly unique users for its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. And Opera’s subsidiary, AdMarvel, has very quickly established itself as a leading mobile advertising platform, the company said. AdMarvel’s mobile ad platform manages more than 35 billion ad impressions a month from more than 9,000 publishers. In 2011, this platform enabled more than $240 million in revenue to mobile publishers globally, Opera said.
The innovation driven from the U.S. office includes the Opera Advertising platform; the Opera Payment Exchange (OPX), which enables easy payment options for users of Opera’s mobile browsers; and the Opera Mobile Store, a multiplatform mobile app store that is now the fifth-largest worldwide.
Following its success in the mobile industry, Opera has also successfully established a foothold in the quickly emerging Smart TV ecosystem. Opera’s HTML5 Web runtime is ported on all major embedded TV platforms and powers millions of connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players from major manufacturers, the company said.
In the last 12 months, Opera Software and its subsidiaries:
- completed the acquisitions of Handster, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising;
- launched the Opera Payment Exchange;
- launched the new and improved Opera Mobile Store based on technology from the Handster acquisition;
- delivered Opera’s Smart TV HTML5 runtime to leading TV OEMs and pay TV operators serving the US market;
- debuted the “State of Mobile Advertising” report, which highlights key data and trends in mobile advertising worldwide;
- doubled the number of employees in the U.S.;
- opened offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago; and
- established Opera as a key partner to mobile developers and mobile content companies in the pursuit of distribution, engagement and monetization across more than 180 countries and territories around the world.
“It was not long ago that we celebrated Opera crossing 100 million users for our mobile browsers and the assembling of our mobile advertising platform. Since that milestone in February 2011, Opera has doubled its users in less than 18 months, and gained status as the leading provider of mobile advertising services,” Mahi de Silva, CEO of AdMarvel and executive vice president of Consumer Mobile at Opera, said in a statement. “We are placing a strong bet on our U.S. assets by expanding our team here and hiring the best talent in Silicon Valley to deliver the best mobile products, tools and services to consumers, developers, publishers and advertisers-globally.”