Mobile browser firm Opera Software has launched the Opera Mobile Store at http://mobilestore.opera.com/
The storefront is a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, making it immediately accessible by more than 100m people who use an Opera browser on their handset.
In its pre-launch state, the Opera Mobile Store attracted more than 15m users from 200 countries in February, and achieved more than 700,000 downloads per day, which the company says established the store as a top 10 mobile app store globally.
The Opera Mobile Store has been built and delivered through a strategic partnership with Appia, which provides open application marketplace technology. It offers both free and paid apps for “virtually any” mobile platform and device. The store is available to Opera users, and to people using other mobile browsers, on all popular mobile phone platforms, in more than 200 countries, thought the release specifically references Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android, so no iOS. The storefront experience is customized to each user’s phone, providing a tailored catalogue, 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,” says Mahi de Silva, EVP, consumer mobile, at 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 launch of the store, Opera has also launched the Opera Publisher Portal at http://publishers.mobilestore.opera.com. This makes it easy for developers to get their apps onto the Opera Mobile Store.
