Rating: Opera Mini becomes first app to hit landmark figure on GetJar
Opera‘s freeware mobile browser, that works on any handset, has now had 10 million hits through GetJar. GetJar specialises in freeware downloads of apps and games to non-iPhone mobiles, and is understandably proud of this development. Opera Mini is the first app to hit that massive figure on it’s site.
What does that mean?
First of all it means that at least 10 million mobile phone owners want to improve their browsing experience… and that’s just from one site! GetJar also claims that it shows how good it is at connecting software developers with its intended audience. It’s kind of hard to disagree.
From the release:
“GetJar is an important partner for Opera and a good route to market outside of our own site,” explained Rolf Assev, chief strategy officer at Opera. “Reaching 10 million downloads with one partner is not just a milestone for us, but for the entire mobile applications industry.”
“Opera Mini has been hugely popular since it first appeared on GetJar in November 2007. It is very highly rated by our users and has been a GetJar Awards winner for the past two years,” commented Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of GetJar. “It is an outstanding example of the performance levels GetJar’s ‘mobile applications ecosystem’ can deliver for developers, with a total of 18 million downloads per month and overall growth of over 120 percent, year-on-year.”
What we think?
This speaks to me of two great hungers that exist amongst the mobile web consumer. The first is a hunger for good software that will work across the board. No one really wants to have to learn how to use a completely new set of programs and apps everytime they switch phone. The second hunger is for FREE STUFF. Everyone loves free stuff, particularly when mobile payments are still up in the air.
This kind of wide spread adoption of free, reliable, platform-agnostic software is something I really like to see. It’s exactly the kind of thing that will lead away from the traditionally huge fragmentation of the mobile audience.
