App Store: Apple approves Opera Mini

Apple has finally approved the Opera Mini browser for distribution through their App Store portal, proving analysts predictions wrong.

The saga surrounding the Opera Mini browser on the iPhone has finally ended on a positive note: Apple has accepted the mobile application to their App Store download portal, making it available to all iPhone’s and iPod Touch’s.

Since January, Opera Software has attracted a lot of media attention about their free Opera Mini mobile browser for the iPhone, a program which has already been deployed to numerous other mobile platforms with more than 50 million users in the world.

All’s well that ends well
Having said this, Apple has never before allowed any mobile browsers to be installed on their devices beside Safari Mobile, with Apple usually taking a firm stance against applications that duplicate native functions already available on their handsets.

Opera has continued to talk up their browser during a range of different events and shows, promising faster execution than the original iPhone browser while being less resource intensive and data hungry thanks to their server side compression of pages before the information is sent to the handset.

Increasing the pressure on Apple, the editor implemented an amusing counter demonstrating the time passed since their application was submitted. The end result is that Apple has green lit the project, with Opera Mini 5 now freely available for download from the App Store, bringing with it the Speed Dial system for fast loading of favourites, browsing by tabs and bookmarks management.