The new storefront will appear as a featured Speed Dial Link in the company’s Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, making it easily accessibly to the more than 100 million people who use Opera browsers around the globe.

The store has been made possible thanks to a strategic partnership between Opera and Appia, a leading provider of open application marketplace technology. The mobile store will like its OS-based competitors (Apple’s App Store and Android Marketplace), feature a number of both paid and free applications, but for a plethora of different mobile platforms and devices.

With Appia’s storefront commerce technology, the Opera Mobile Store leverages a wide catalogue of applications to use with phones running Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems. The storefront customises itself for each phone, providing a tailored catalogue based on the device’s operating system, language and currency.

The store is available to Opera users as well as users of other mobile browsers and will at launch be available in more than 200 countries.

“The launch of the Opera Mobile Store supports Opera’s core belief in an open, cross-platform mobile Internet experience by providing Opera users with an integrated storefront of mobile applications,” said Mahi de Silva, EVP, consumer mobile, Opera Software. “Our partnership with Appia delivers to all Opera Mobile and Opera Mini users easy access to a wide variety of great content, on any device, all over the world.”

To aid developers in getting their applications on the store, Opera has also launched the Opera Publisher Portal, supplying an easy and streamlined way for developers to upload their creations and get it in front of millions of Opera users. The Opera Mobile Store already attracted more than 15 million visitors in its pre-launch state, achieving 700 000 downloads a day during February.

“The Opera Mobile Store presents a remarkable opportunity for mobile application developers to distribute localized content through a single, far-reaching marketplace,” said Jud Bowman, CEO of Appia.

Opera recently hit the 100 million user milestone, and is quickly becoming one of the major players in the mobile market.