Doubles employees, triples office space, bullish on growth through 2014 and beyond
Opera Software today announced a major expansion in Silicon Valley, by growing its presence through a brand-new office in San Mateo, doubling headcount and tripling office space within the past year. Opera and its subsidiaries are now covering the expanse of the San Francisco Bay area with offices in San Francisco, San Mateo and Mountain View.
The expansion to the new floor in Opera’s San Mateo location will bring the total square footage of Opera’s U.S. office space to 60,000 square feet – up from 20,000 square feet a year ago. Opera and its subsidiaries now employ 200 employees in Silicon Valley – double from the same time last year. This number is expected to reach 300 in 2014.
Much of the growth for Opera in California is coming through Opera Mediaworks, its mobile advertising subsidiary, where revenue grew by more than 100% in Q2 2013 compared to the same time last year. The addition of Skyfire, the mobile cloud-based solutions provider, which Opera acquired earlier this year, was another major step in the rapid expansion of Opera Software in Silicon Valley.
In the past year, Opera Software and its subsidiaries in California:
- Launched Opera Mediaworks – a new umbrella brand for Opera’s mobile advertising subsidiary, which consists of AdMarvel, Mobile Theory, 4th Screen Advertising and Opera Mediaworks Performance.
- Grew the Opera Mediaworks platform to serve over 13,000 sites and applications, serving 60 billion ad impressions a month, and reaching 400 million global consumers. Revenues from the Opera Mediaworks division grew 106% in year over year in Q2 2013.
- Completed the acquisition of Skyfire, a provider of mobile cloud-based solutions to operators around the world, adding a Mountain View-based engineering team and a new suite of products for the operator solutions business unit at Opera. Skyfire has grown employees nearly 50% since the acquisition to support delivery for new customers around the world, and it expects to continue hiring materially in 2014.
- Won new business for Skyfire’s mobile video optimization platform, Rocket Optimizer, from Norway’s Telenor Group this year, to be implemented across 12 countries, and reached deployment acceptance with a tier-1 U.S. mobile operator across half of its network.
- Expanded Skyfire’s browser extension platform for smartphones, Skyfire Horizon, which has already shipped on several million Android smartphones that are sold by two U.S. tier-1 mobile operators.
- Launched Coast, a new browser for the iPad, with a revolutionary user interface that removes all visual clutter for a lean-back experience. Coast launched as a top downloaded app in over 25 countries and a top 5 overall app in the Apple App Store in the United States.
- Introduced Opera for Android, and Opera for Windows and Mac – Webkit-based browsers for smartphones and desktop respectively, attuned to U.S. consumers.
- Forged partnerships with leading U.S. device makers such as Boxee (now part of Samsung) and TiVo to bring the Opera Devices SDK and the Opera TV Store to their devices.
“Silicon Valley has become one of Opera’s most strategic locations to do business and grow our talent base,” says Lars Boilesen, CEO, Opera Software. “We realize the importance and influence Silicon Valley has on how we power the global mobile ecosystem, including how we help consumers to discover content, advertisers to reach the audience they are looking for, publishers to generate revenue and operators to provide a faster and better network experience. We will continue our expansion in this region by hiring people in all areas and generating more revenue than ever.”