Mobilization: OMAX, SmartPay and Opera Mobile Store

Today we continue to share surprises on a mobile theme. In the previous article, you already learned about the release of new versions of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini, and also briefly familiarized yourself with the new features introduced in them. These were news to a greater extent for users, but today those who prefer to combine the useful with the pleasant also expect surprises - use the Internet not only as an information and entertainment channel, but also as a means of earning real money for themselves. But first, a little theory and numbers.

Everyone knows that the number of users is a key indicator that allows you to assess the commercial potential of a software product or an online service. If you have a million users - you already have the opportunity to earn tangible money on partnerships, advertising, paid services and other reasonable (ie, voluntary for the user) ways to make a profit. If your user base has grown to the level of 10 million - you can not only have a small staff, but also receive funds for the further rapid development of the project. The 100 million user audience says that you have become a participant in big business and if you still haven't thought about how to monetize your project - you are, to put it mildly, a very original person.

To date, the number of users of Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers in the world exceeds 160 million, more than 6 million more are added to this figure every month. And we are not original - we want to earn money. Naturally in reasonable ways. In fact, we have long been making money on our mobile development, which everyone can learn from the publicly available quarterly Opera Software reports , but for some reason we want to earn even more. Here is such a strange whim.
')
But how to make money on software products that are distributed completely free of charge? This is a very interesting question and it is always asked of us as one of the first at any meeting with users and developers. Yes, the product itself, we do not sell to users, but we can provide an opportunity for others to sell their products and services through our browsers, while receiving a certain percentage of the profits of our partners. As you can see - in fact, everything is quite simple and trite. It remains only to offer our users and potential partners convenient tools that will allow you to both earn wisely and properly spend your money. These are the tools that will be discussed today.

Omax

Advertising. We all hate her, but the whole business still rests on her, damned. Remove advertising - and the entire global market will collapse, drawing into the abyss of chaos all, both producers and consumers. Of course, one could rebel against this colorful smiling monster, inviting all of us into a non-existent perfect world without caries and stains on clothes, but there is one small problem - we need money. And the advertising business brings quite good money.

Therefore, today we are introducing a new version of our own global mobile advertising system - OMAX . The system is based on the AdMarvel advertising platform that we acquired two years ago, to which the purchases of the current month were added - Mobile Theory Inc. advertising networks. (works in the US market) and 4th Screen (works in the European market). Thus, OMAX today is a complete solution for placing mobile advertising all over the world, accessible to all agencies, advertisers and mobile operators.

The uniqueness of the new system is that, thanks to the large number of Opera mobile browser users around the world, we can provide very accurate advertising positioning both geographically and user preferences. At the same time, let me remind you that we are adherents of a reasonable approach to making money, so we don’t like any “shadowing” of users - we have enough general information analyzed on Opera Mini servers. It remains only to add that advertising placement does not depend on the platform and can be done using all the technologies available today - the usual placement in the code pages or using JavaScript, using the XML API or the native SDK for iOS and Android, thus ensuring easy integration of advertising ads in both webpages and mobile apps.

However, enough about advertising. After all, there are more noble ways of making money on the Internet, for example -

Opera Mobile Store

We have launched an updated version of this portal, which provides distribution of both free mobile applications and fully paid ones. Now this service is based on the Handster project acquired last September, and after completing all the integration steps, today Opera Mobile Store has become the world's fifth largest mobile application portal. At the moment, the catalog contains more than 55,000 applications (both free and paid) for all popular devices on the Android, Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and iOS platforms (more than 3000 devices are supported in total), sales are made in 200 countries, and monthly application downloads exceed 45 million.

And again, returning to the conversation about the benefits of mass product: by the way, access to the Opera Mobile Store is carried out in one click from all Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, and this, I recall, more than 160 million potential users of your applications, with a tangible part of them and your buyers. By the way, there are a lot of applications in the catalog in Russian, in other words, some of your programmer friends are already earning money by selling applications through the Opera Mobile Store. You can also join - it's easy, just register on the developer page .

You can read more about the new Opera Mobile Store here , and we will move on to the next topic, which follows smoothly from the previous one: how, in fact, to pay and, what's much more interesting, to get what you earn? And here there is a problem. No, the problem is not that it is difficult to pay and receive, this is just all right. The difficulty is that while I was writing the first part of the article, several more press releases were published, and they fit very well into today's review of Opera Software’s mobile solutions. Therefore, I will try to combine all the latest information in one chapter -

Money

As I have already said, in Opera Mobile Store there are no problems with user payments and getting money by developers. But you always want all these processes to pass even more quickly, more safely and with minimal losses. Well, we also agree with this and continue to develop the topic. For example, by entering into a partnership agreement with the company InMobi , who invented the SmartPay mobile payment system . This system works around the world and makes it easy to make payments when purchasing both mobile applications and mobile content.

But in fact, for Russia and the CIS, this service is not so interesting for objective reasons. We would have something native, congenial, with birch trees and pickled mushrooms for vodka. Well - no question. Especially to simplify the work with the Opera Mobile Store on the territory of the former USSR, Opera Software has expanded its cooperation with Yandex , integrating the Yandex.Money payment system. Thus, in countries where Yandex.Money are in use, this type of settlement will be preferred by users and developers of the Opera Mobile Store applications.

So, with payment systems, the situation is clear, but there is always the fear that when making a mobile payment, something goes wrong, not there and not in the amount in which it was planned. The crooks now divorced nemeryannom, they still dream of emptying your wallet for a certain amount, the size of which is proportional to the audacity of scammers. In other words, we need a reliable transaction system that inspires confidence in both payers and payees. And now we also have such a system - Opera Payment Exchange .

Thanks to this payment system, users will be able to make payments without leaving Opera's browser, which eliminates the possibility of errors or failures when switching to using an external tool. It is also worth saying that this system is already involved in work with our partners - InMobi SmartPay, Yandex.Money and Bango (another mobile payment system that provides purchases of applications in the Opera Mobile Store for US users).

So, as a result.
As you already understood, Opera’s mobile browsers today are not only valuable fur programs for web browsing, but they have also become part of a global system that allows you to access various content and mobile applications from anywhere in the world, pay for goods and services, and earn money. money - in general, to fully exploit all the opportunities offered to us by a global network called the Internet. Actually, this was and is our main goal - to provide users of our browsers with all the advantages of the Web as far as technically possible. And I can say more: the same goal with us continues to remain the main one in the plans for the future. We hope that you will be able to appreciate our efforts in this direction.