Mobile Europe publishes GetJar blog post (that you can’t read on GetJar yet)
This morning, independent app store GetJar tweeted that due to breach of terms and conditions, Opera Mini was to be slung off the GetJar app store. Opera Mini has been one of the top performing apps on GetJar up until this action – totalling 30 million downloads.
The announcement came a day after Opera announced it would be launching its own app store. Naturally, most people put two and two together, and came up with the correct answer. GetJar is not happy about Opera including its own app store within the browers, effectively denying GetJar of potential ad revenue, as it sees it.
We have received a blog post, before it has been published, from GetJar in defence of its action.
Opera Mini told us, “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. Opera Mini has been one of the most popular downloads in GetJar’s system historically, so we also believe this means that their users are missing out on a popular app. We are in dialogue with GetJar about the process going forward. At this stage we can not confirm anything”.
GetJar’s PR was keen to point out that although the company promotes openness, it is still a business, and needs to protect its own interests.
Read GetJar’s blog post below (complete with smileys):
Dear GetJar Users,
This week we had to take a very drastic and unusual step at GetJar: to remove one of our long-time favourite apps. This is something that we don’t take lightly and is nearly unprecedented in the 5+ years we’ve been distributing apps to consumers in more than 190 countries. The app in question, Opera Mini browser, had racked up more the 30 million downloads on GetJar over the last several years and was one of the most popular apps in the browser category. It was also the winner of the prestigious Gettie Award last year for best mobile app in the Windows Mobile category
So why did we do this?
Apps on Getjar are free to download. This has always allowed us to provide quick, unrestricted and worldwide access to apps for all our users. It’s a central part of our business and philosophy and one that we find fundamental to allowing consumers to try great content no matter where they live and how they want to consume apps. However, to keep our service running GetJar needs to make money 😉 Therefore, we allow app developers to promote their applications on GetJar using advertising. Developers can obtain extra visibility to promote their apps and pay for this on a per-download-basis. This keeps your content free, keeps us running and allows developers to get extra visibility.
The simple problem is that Opera mini decided to include a competing app store in its browser. Although we don’t have any issue with this in principle, in practice it means that consumers might start using this app store instead of visiting GetJar to get their favourite apps. This 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. It also jeopardizes an ecosystem that has generated over 1.6 billion downloads for tens of thousands of developers who depend on us to make money from their apps. Don’t get me wrong: we’re happy to go head-to-head with any other app store and are certain that once you’ve tried the Opera App store you’ll find the depth of content, discovery and download from GetJar more compelling than ever. But it’s an another thing entirely to help competitors grow their business at our expense or that of our community. We spent many months negotiating with Opera to avoid this scenario and are disappointed that GetJar consumers will no longer have access to Opera Mini. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent options on GetJar for our users including Bitstream Bolt, UC Web browser and Squace. All are excellent products.
In the meantime, we hope to resolve this solution with Opera in the future and want to thank you all for being such dedicated GetJar fans 😉
Thanks,
Patrick Mork, CMO GetJar