Opera Mini is most downloaded app ever, but for how long?

August 25, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

operaminiOpera’s browser for mobile handsets gets little recognition in America, but it’s been downloaded from GetJar’s application catalog 25 million times. The current version of the app has been grabbed over 7 million times. (The top countries for Opera Mini usage are, in order, Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, and South Africa.)

That makes Opera far and away the most downloaded app at GetJar, which most Americans also probably wouldn’t recognize as the world’s largest mobile app catalog.

Opera Mini is a sweet little product — it even supports Flash. Its success, though, comes just as much from the Mozilla Foundation’s lack of a mobile browser. Fennec, the mobile spinoff of Firefox, isn’t ready for the mass market yet.

TechCrunch reports that Opera accounts for 25 percent of mobile browsers out there, according to analytics site StatCounter. It’s ahead of the Safari browser built into every iPhone, which accounts for 20 percent of browsers tracked by StatCounter.

Safari points to the right strategy for Opera to fend off its competition: Get installed as the default browser on the most popular phones possible. CEO Jon von Tetzchner has been working on deals with U.S. phone makers, but so far no Opera wins have been announced. I wouldn’t write them off yet, though. Given the browser’s popularity with customers who go out of their way to download and install it, there’s reason to believe the scrappy little Norwegian company will continue to beat the odds by executing on product development. Opera’s browser works really well. The End.

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About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Drew
    Somehow I don't think you use Opera Mini or a phone that supports it. I've been running Opera Mini on my Nokia E71 for six months now and to the best of my knowledge, it DOES NOT support flash.

    If you can kindly advise as to how I can unlock this wonderful feature, I'd be most grateful. In the meantime, at least do some research before you post an article.