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I talked with Mahi De Silva, Opera’s EVP of consumer mobile about the rejection of Opera Mobile Store and how it fits into Opera’s larger vision going forward. Even though GetJar said it has had 30 million downloads of Opera mobile browsers, De Silva said the independent app store is, “not an appreciable source of downloads.” De Silva said Opera has 110 million current active users and has 600,000 downloads of its mobile browser each day.

He confirmed the two companies held talks prior to the launch of Opera’s mobile app store, but Opera decided to move ahead because GetJar’s goals weren’t aligned with Opera’s. Basically, Opera wasn’t interested in stripping out its app store and was waiting to see if GetJar would react, which it did. De Silva said Opera is still open to working with GetJar, but right now, the software company seems more intent on competing with GetJar and other app markets long-term as apps, both native and browser-based, become even bigger business.

“The next chapter for Opera is expanding from a browser to delivering a more expansive fabric of service for consumers and content providers,” De Silva said. “This (Opera Mobile Store) is the first step in a very strategic path for us to enable our browser to provide great content and utilities to any phone regardless of the OS that might be on the device.”

As De Silva sees it, Opera has to get into the app market because that’s what consumers and developers want. It’s also where the money is. But it’s not just native apps; Opera is looking at being a distribution point for web apps built on HTML and JavaScript, in whatever form they take, whether its robust programs or lightweight widgets. He said it’s unclear what will win out, but Opera is positioning itself to be a provider of both. In the meantime, Opera is also looking at distributing apps to more feature phones, which is where most of its browsers are found. De Silva said while smartphones are growing, there are still many more basic phones in the world. He said the Opera Mobile Store also tailors each store to the device and region that it’s sold in, so the store is accessible and useful to a wide number of users.

“We believe there is a tremendous opportunity in building this infrastructure for consumers developers and publishers to tap into that broader audience,” said De Silva.

That’s why the Opera isn’t sweating GetJar. It’s got designs on hitting the 5 billion phones in the world, and it’s doing the work now to be in place for when apps really blow up. The move fits in line with the stuff we’ve been reporting about the boom in mobile app sales, which could hit $38 billion by 2015 according to Forrester. It’s also consistent with a renewed push (think: WAC) we’re seeing to distribute apps on feature phones, which is a shrinking market but still huge.

But I pointed out to De Silva that in this app boom, competing stores won’t take kindly to an Opera browser serving as a rival app store. He said Opera is being mindful of the landscape and is tailoring its products in certain cases to stay within different app store guidelines. For example, the iOS Opera browser app will not link to Opera’s own store for app downloads but will send people to Apple’s App Store. The RIM BlackBerry version, however, does handle transactions through Opera when it’s supported on newer versions of the BlackBerry OS, while older phones link back to BlackBerry App World. And the Android version completely sidesteps billing through Google, which I said will likely be a sticking point.

De Silva said he thought Android’s “open” environment would allow Opera Mobile Store. But he also said Opera will be pragmatic about dealing with any major platform owners who balk at the Opera browser serving as an app distribution point. So the Android Opera app could get pulled, or Opera could adjust it to be less competitive.

“We’re not trying to predict what Google will or won’t do; we’re focusing on creating the world’s best browser and a compelling content experience for consumers and developers,” De Silva said. “If, based on some app store policies, we have to re-examine that, we’ll adjust that strategy.”

I think Opera is going to have a bumpy road on its way to being an app purveyor. Android is increasingly shutting the door on any Android Market app that smells like an app store. I doubt RIM will look the other way for long, either. There’s too much money at stake here, which can make this a tough business to be in. But as we’ve reported before, independent app stores are on the rise and are expected to eclipse on-deck app stores in sales soon. Increasingly, it seems like app stores are becoming more appealing to companies with a huge following or a developer community. Opera’s efforts reflect the importance of the app economy and how attractive it is, even for a browser maker. The company’s success will be an interesting test to see if its relationship with consumers as a browser maker can be effectively leveraged to sell apps.

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Opera said the store will be a Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers and will offer apps for Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and Java. The number of apps available will vary according to the end device, with the store only presenting apps that work on that phone. Users will get a tailored store experience that includes local language and currency support, too. By leveraging Appia, Opera will have the ability to offer some 140,000 Appia apps on various platforms and will be able to boast its own store with minimal effort.

As I said earlier, the app market is booming with some projecting off-deck app markets eclipsing native app stores in revenue by next year. Forrester Research recently turned heads by predicting the mobile app market will be worth $38 billion by 2015. That’s a staggering sum, considering Apple’s App Store has generated a little less than $3 billion since it opened in July of 2008, with developers taking $2 billion so far. But it shows there’s a lot of optimism in app stores.

Opera is clearly angling to get a piece of the pie by extending beyond simply providing a mobile browser to being a purveyor of content. It’s hoping to leverage its existing reach in 200 countries, which gives it a leg up in competing for eyeballs. Opera said a pre-launch of the Opera Mobile Store in February attracted more than 15 million users, who racked up more than 700,000 downloads per day.

With everyone rushing to create app stores, I don’t know if anyone but a handful will get the kind of traffic needed to be really successful. The ones that simply resell and don’t create much value for developers or consumers may not see much success. Opera is trying to build relationships with developers through the Opera Publisher Portal, which is meant to make it easy for developers to upload their apps. But unless developers see a lot of money-making opportunities to warrant supporting additional stores, many will concentrate on the destinations that command attention and are willing to promote and market their apps, not just try to make some money off of them. And unless consumers of these stores get exclusive apps, better security, improved discovery or cheaper pricing, I’m not sure many will spend a lot of time in these markets. It’s not proving easy to make a store. The challenge now is ensuring its equipped to compete.

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What’s new for the company right now?
JvT: The market is moving in our direction very, very clearly. As a company we’ve always had this idea that you access the same Internet from PCs and other devices. We’re having nice growth on the PC side and significant growth on the mobile side on devices — basically everything is growing…We’re the only company across the world that’s on everything.

But in terms of desktop market share don’t you still have a little under 1 percent?
JvT: No — the problem is the stats out there are very inaccurate and skewed toward markets where we’re not so strong. We have markets where we’re less than 1 percent market share and then we have markets where we have 55 percent market share — countries like Russia and neighboring countries. In Eastern and Northern Europe, the market share is double digits, as it is in some Asian countries, like Indonesia. In mobile we’re the leading vendor worldwide.

How is Opera Mini helping that market growth?
JvT: It’s the most popular mobile product right now with end users. Opera Mini runs on the server and via a small client on the phone, but from the end-user perspective, it works like a local browser. It compresses the data significantly, 85 percent on average, which gives mobile device speeds matching those of Wi-Fi. People are flocking to Mini in huge volumes — last month we had 19 million active users, not including OEM versions of the software, which we don’t track.

How is growth in emerging markets helping the Mini?
JvT: Only 20 percent of world has Internet access but half the world has mobile access. More and more of those operators and OEMs are installing Mini for users for whom it’s not about another way to get on the Internet, it’s the way.

What’s the breakdown of the rest of your user base?
JvT: For desktop, the last official number was between 25 million and 30 million users. I’m not able to give any numbers for Wii [Internet Channel]! There’s a long list of different devices we’re shipping on, in the millions, like Sony and Philips TVs.

How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you?
JvT: The effect of Chrome so far has been 20 percent more downloads every day. It’s fairly logical when you think about it, because the biggest hurdle we have is all those people that don’t realize there’s an alternative in the market. Now, with the launch of Chrome there’s focus on the choice of browsers in the market.

Theoretically [WebKit] can be used to develop other browsers, but that’s not a trivial thing to do. There’s a fair amount of Mozilla-code-based browsers, but there’s only one that has success, and that’s the one controlled by Mozilla.

How is the global downturn impacting your business?
JvT: People are not going to stop using the Internet. We’re at the very early stages of Internet access in mobile, and that’s going to explode in the next few years, independent of any economic downturn. With our software, you don’t need to get the latest, shiniest model of phone, you don’t need to the 3G or 4G network to browse.

What are some of the new devices you see down the road?
JvT: Any device that could potentially be connected to the Internet would benefit from a browser, including special devices like barcode readers [for inventory management] on a closed network, or set-top boxes.

What’s next for Opera?
JvT and TT: The browser has been evolving into an engine for running applications, which benefits designers, because mobile side platform fragmentation is going to have a big impact on mobile devices. We also have a beta version of Dragonfly developer tools available for Opera 9.5 and above that lets developers debug remotely, via the web.

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