Opera Mobile Store
Opera Mobile Store was a platform-independent browser-based app store for mobile-phone owners and a digital application distribution platform used by more than 40,000 developers. It is owned and maintained by Opera. Launched by a third-party provider in March 2011, the Opera Mobile Store was relaunched on a new platform, after acquisition of Handster, a mobile app store platform company, in January 2012. The service allows users to browse and download applications for over 7,500 different devices on Android, Java, BlackBerry OS, Symbian, iOS, and Windows Mobile.
Opera Mobile Store has than 1 million app downloads a day and is accessible from any mobile phone via a bookmark or the Start Page of Opera Mini or Opera Mobile browsers. The store is also accessible from any other browser, including desktop versions, and on any operating system, from https://apps.opera.com/. The Opera Mobile Store then forwards the user to the country-specific store based on the location information provided by the mobile carrier or ISP.
Over 86% of the applications for Android-powered phones provided by the Opera Mobile Store are free of charge. The average free-vs.-paid-apps ratio for all platforms is 70% and 30%, respectively. These applications are generally targeted on a particular category, including video games, business applications, social media apps, e-books, and others.
History
On March 8, 2011, Opera Software announced the launch of Opera Mobile Store powered by third-party provider. On September 19, 2011, Opera Software acquired app store platform company Handster, which was the leading independent applications store for Android market at that time.Following the acquisition of Handster, Opera Software made a major overhaul since the Opera Mobile Store launch. Opera Software announced a revamped Opera Mobile Store with improved distribution and monetization capabilities for developers, and better customization for white-label marketplaces at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 27, 2012. In July 2013, developers can now upload apps to both the Yandex Store and the Opera Mobile Store simultaneously, as a result of agreements between the two companies.
On November 18, 2014, Microsoft and Opera Software have signed an agreement to replace Nokia Store with the Opera Mobile Store as the default app store for Nokia feature phones, Symbian and Nokia X smartphones. The process of migrating customers from Nokia Store to Opera Mobile Store is expected to be complete in the first half of 2015, at which point Nokia Store will be closed.
Number of downloaded applications
As stated in the official Opera Software press-release, by February 27, 2012, Opera Mobile Store reached more than 30 million monthly app store visits and over 45 million monthly app downloads.Number of apps in the store has tripled over the year 2013, while the number of monthly visitors to the Opera's app distribution platform grew to 75 million in October, 2013.
At the end of Q4 2013 Opera Software announced that it has reached a new milestone — 105 million monthly visitors. That is a 172% increase in a year since the close of 2012. The top-three countries in 2013 based on the number of Opera Mobile Store users were India, the United States and Indonesia. By November, 2014 Opera's app store started to offer close to 300,000 mobile apps and games across most mobile platforms. Earlier, in early 2014 the mobile store offered over 200,000 apps significant growth in the number of apps available.