Opera Mobile Store, powered by Appia, goes live for Mobile and Mini

It's not the first browser to get its own app store, but the Opera Mobile Store is... well, another app store. The Store has just launched and is powered by Appia, which offers a white-label app store system for carriers like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, as well as some top-tier handset manufacturers.

The Store will appear on Opera Mobile and Opera Mini Speed Dial pages and give users access to paid and free apps. During pre-launch testing, Opera tallied more than 15 million users in 200 countries downloading around 700,000 apps per day.

With numbers like that, it's no wonder Opera wanted to get in on the app store action. Can it work? Sure it can. The combined Opera Mobile and Mini install base is massive -- in excess of 100 million users -- and plenty of those installs are on devices owned by less-technical users. The more they browse, the more they'll see that Mobile Store link -- and they're bound to try a download or two.

Apps can be purchased for all of Appia's supported platforms, including Android, BlackBerry, Java, Symbian, and Windows Mobile -- even if you don't own a device.

Tags: android, app store, appia, apps, AppStore, blackberry, ios, java, mobile, opera, opera mini, opera mobile, opera mobile store, OperaMini, OperaMobile, OperaMobileStore, speed dial, SpeedDial