Opera Software’s US subsidiaries, focused on mobile advertising, storefronts, payments and Smart TVs, expand with new offices, increased hiring and broader product design and development
Commuters on Silicon Valley’s busiest freeway, US 101, will notice a large new Opera logo atop a shiny office building in San Mateo, California. Opera Software’s new and improved visibility is a reflection of the company’s growing success as a global powerhouse in the mobile ecosystem and its significant expansion in Silicon Valley – inaugurating a new 20,000 sq. feet office, employing more than 100 people, with plans for aggressive growth for the rest of 2012 and beyond. These new offices are now home to Opera Software’s subsidiaries, AdMarvel and Mobile Theory, as well as Opera’s US branch office.
In the past year, Oslo, Norway-based Opera Software has further increased its leading position in the mobile browser market, surpassing more than 200 million monthly unique users for its Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers and Opera’s subsidiary, AdMarvel, has very quickly established itself as the world’s leading mobile advertising platform. AdMarvel’s mobile ad platform manages over 35 billion ad impressions a month from more than 9,000 publishers. In 2011, this platform enabled over $240 million in revenue to mobile publishers globally.
The innovation driven from the US office includes the Opera Advertising platform; the Opera Payment Exchange (OPX), which enables easy payment options for users of Opera’s mobile browsers; and the Opera Mobile Store, a multi-platform mobile app store that is now the fifth largest worldwide.
Following its success in the mobile industry, Opera has also successfully established the leading position in the quickly emerging Smart TV ecosystem. Opera’s HTML5 web runtime is ported today on all major embedded TV platforms and powers millions of connected TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-ray players from major manufacturers.
In the last 12 months, Opera Software and its subsidiaries:
- Completed the acquisitions of Handster, Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising
- Launched the Opera Payment Exchange
- Launched the new and improved Opera Mobile Store based on technology from the Handster acquisition
- Delivered Opera’s Smart TV HTML5 runtime to leading TV OEMs and pay TV operators serving the US market
- Debuted the State of Mobile Advertising report, which highlights key data and trends in mobile advertising worldwide
- Doubled the number of employees in the US
- Opened additional offices in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago
- Established Opera as a key partner to mobile developers and mobile content companies in the pursuit of distribution, engagement and monetization across more than 180 countries and territories around the world
“It was not long ago that we celebrated Opera crossing 100 million users for our mobile browsers and the assembling of our mobile advertising platform. Since that milestone in February 2011, Opera has doubled its users in less than 18 months, and gained status as the leading provider of mobile advertising services,” said Mahi de Silva, CEO of AdMarvel and EVP Consumer Mobile, Opera Software. “We are placing a strong bet on our US assets by expanding our team here and hiring the best talent in Silicon Valley to deliver the best mobile products, tools and services to consumers, developers, publishers and advertisers – globally.”