It seems that the new year always brings with it a new Opera milestone in turn. Indeed, while February of 2013 marked Opera reaching 300 million monthly users across its entire range of browsers — which include desktop, mobile and TV variants — this year brings with it a new achievement for the Opera Mobile Store. Specifically, the fifth-largest mobile app store in the world now boasts 105 million monthly visitors.
This is hardly surprising, however, since the app market supports several platforms — including Android, Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and iOS — with more than 200,000 mobile apps and games on hand. The growth was also likely helped along by the market’s completely redesigned storefront, which Opera says helped generate record-breaking conversion rates.
Regardless of the circumstances that led to it, the Opera Mobile Store managed impressive visitor growth of 172 percent throughout 2013.
"The Opera Mobile Store was launched in September 2011, based on the technology from the acquisition of Handster. In just over two years, the Opera Mobile Store has shown strong growth — from 18 million monthly visitors to 100 million, and has seen a fivefold increase in the number of apps offered," said Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software, in a statement. "The compression technology in Opera’s browsers, combined with the broad portfolio of apps in the Opera Mobile Store across many different platforms, have resulted in massive adoption of the store worldwide."
Other noteworthy moments for the Opera Mobile Store over the last year include: the forging of several partnerships with mobile carriers in Europe, such as VimpelCom and MTS Belarus; a cross-app store partnership with popular Eastern European search engine Yandex; and 250 percent growth in page views over 2012.
Looking ahead, it’s very likely Opera will build on this momentum to further its growth throughout 2014. That said, it’s also hard to imagine it will be able to top 2013’s numbers.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker 
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