Opera mobile store to become the default app store on legacy Nokia phones

Opera Software has signed an agreement with Microsoft to become the default mobile app store on the Nokia Symbian feature phones and Nokia X platform devices. From the first quarter of next year, the Nokia Store app will redirect to the Opera Mobile Store for the Nokia Series 40, Series 60, Symbian, Asha, and Nokia X.

With the agreement, Opera will be the third largest mobile app store in the world after Google Play and the App Store. Over 40,000 developers contribute to the Opera mobile store ecosystem, which has close to 300,000 apps and sees about 70 million downloads every month. Opera recently surpassed 50 millions users in India and has become the third most downloaded app in the country.

Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software, told Tech in Asia: “We are the third biggest independent mobile advertising company after Facebook and Google. With our strong user base, the mobile app developers can advertise their apps to a larger audience and also make the best of our billing integration which lets users buy apps even without a credit card.”

Nokia Symbian, Asha, and Nokia X device owners will get to use the web-based Opera mobile store to browse, discover, and download apps. However, users on the Nokia X platform, which is based on the Android Open Source Project, will have a slightly different experience. The tweak is needed in order to deliver a typical Android smartphone experience to these users.

The migration of the Nokia app store to Opera is expected to finish by the first half of 2015. The Nokia store will no longer be accessible following the move.

techinasia