Sorry, no donut for you
‘The application you have requested does not exist on GetJar'. This is what you will get if you do a Google search for ‘GetJar+Opera'.
The two app stores are at war, it seems. A day after Opera launched its web app store; GetJar has announced that it has removed the Opera browser from its own app store.
In a tweet earlier, the company said "due to violations of our T&C's [apostrophe crime! - Ed] Opera Mini has been banned from GetJar." Replying to another tweet, GetJar said "one thing we can't do is promote competing app stores."
According to a report from Mobile Europe, Opera Mini has been one of the top performing apps on GetJar with nearly 30 million downloads, until this morning. According to a year-end report published in ReadWriteWeb, the Opera Mini browser was ranked number 5 among the top ten downloaded apps in 2010.
GetJar currently sells apps for free and wholly relies on advertising revenue to keep it going. Defending its action, GetJar said in a blog that the decision of Opera to start an app store within its browser "robs GetJar of traffic and therefore of the advertising necessary to keep our service free for the more than 25 million consumers that use GetJar."
However, Opera Mini believes this move could mean that users are missing out on a popular app. Speaking to Mobile Europe, Opera Mini mentioned that: "As we have worked closely with GetJar for a number of years we would like to find a solution to still be part of their offering. We are in dialogue with GetJar about the process going forward."
When Mobilewalla, an app search engine launched a day before Opera came out with its app store, it seemed like GetJar was the only other individual app store to compete against. The launch of Opera's web app store came as a surprise from a browser and has caused a flurry of events. With increasing options to search and buy apps, Gartner's prediction of a $15 billion revenue stream for app stores will doubtless soon come true.
