Reason for Opera Removal

Dear GetJar Users,

This week we had to take a very drastic and unusual step at GetJar: to remove one of our longtime favorite apps.  This is something that we don’t take lightly and is nearly unprecedented in the 5+ years we’ve been distributing apps to consumers in more then 190 countries.  The app in question, Opera Mini browser, had racked up more the 30 million downloads on GetJar over the last several years and was one of the most popular apps in the browser category.  It was also the winner of the prestigious Gettie Award last year for best mobile app in the Windows Mobile category

So why did we do this?

Apps on Getjar are free to download.  This has always allowed us to provide quick, unrestricted and worldwide access to apps for all our users.  It’s a central part of our business and philosophy and one that we find fundamental to allowing consumers to try great content no matter where they live and how they want to consume apps.  However, to keep our service running GetJar needs to make money   Therefore, we allow app developers to promote their applications on GetJar using advertising.  Developers can obtain extra visibility to promote their apps and pay for this on a per-download-basis.  This keeps your content free, keeps us running and allows developers to get extra visibility.

The simple problem is that Opera mini decided to include a competing app store in its browser.  Although we don’t have any issue with this in principle, in practice it means that consumers might start using this app store instead of visiting GetJar to get their favorite apps.  This robs GetJar of traffic and therefore of the advertising necessary to keep our service free for the more then 25 million consumers that use GetJar.  It also jeopardizes an ecosystem that has generated over 1.6 billion downloads for tens of thousands of developers who depend on us to make money from their apps.  Don’t get me wrong:  we’re happy to go head-to-head with any other app store and are certain that once you’ve tried the Opera App store you’ll find the depth of content, discovery and download from GetJar more compelling then ever. But it’s an another thing entirely to help competitors grow their business at our expense or that of our community.  We spent many months negotiating with Opera to avoid this scenario and are disappointed that GetJar consumers will no longer have access to Opera Mini. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent options on GetJar for our users including Bitstream Bolt, UC Web browser and Squace.  All are excellent products.

In the meantime, we hope to resolve this solution with Opera in the future and want to thank you all for being such dedicated GetJar fans

Thanks,
Patrick

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