Opera's app store clears 100 million monthly users

After the 2011 acquisition of app-store specialist Handster, the Norwegian browser maker has enough visitors to rank its Opera Mobile Store as the fifth-largest app store, the company says.

Stephen Shankland principal writer

Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.

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Stephen Shankland

Jan. 28, 2014 12:04 p.m. PT

About 105 million people used the Opera Mobile Store from Opera Software in December, a statistic big enough to rank it as the fifth largest app store, the Norwegian browser maker said Tuesday.

The company's app store offers 200,000 mobile apps for a variety of device types with a variety of operating systems -- Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, iOS, and Java.

The top type is a Java app, but in 2013, Android apps nearly matched it, accounting for with 42.7 percent of downloads, Opera said.

New users grew by a factor of 1.7 compared to 2012, Opera said.

Opera's app store has its roots in the company's 2011 acquisition of Handster. The top app stores, however, remain Google Play and the Apple App Store.

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