Opera has announced its own App Store for mobile phones yesterday. The store, accessible to over 100 million users who use Opera’s Mobile browsers has been built in partnership with Appia, a leading provider of open application market technology. The Opera Mobile Store already has a bunch of paid and free applications and is available in over 200 countries. It has apps for almost all popular platforms out there excluding iOS. Supported platforms include Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems. When you open the store, it automatically detects the browser of your phone and displays a custom page for you that displays apps that would work on your device.
Along with the mobile Store, Opera has also launched its Opera Publisher Portal aimed at providing developers with an easy way to get their applications onto the Opera Mobile Store. Opera claims that the store has already attracted more than 15 million users in February, from 200 countries, achieving more than 700,000 downloads per day.
Free apps can be downloaded without the need for signing up directly from the portal. Paid apps though would need you to sign up. Opera’s app store would compete with players like GetJar which is one of the largest players in the open app market field. As a retaliatory move of sorts, Getjar has removed Opera browsers from its catalog citing violation of terms. GetJar has clearly stated that it is in no mood to promote competing platforms.
Head to http://mobilestore.opera.com from your phone’s browser to check out the app store.
