Filed under: Business, Apple, iPhone, Browsers
After a week of being bashed for anti-competitive behavior, Apple pulled a surprise move and approved Opera Mini for iPhone on Monday night. The Opera browser competes directly with Apple's own default Safari browser, and there was plenty of speculation that Apple would play the old "duplicates existing functionality" card. Instead, Steve Jobs and Co. went for the brownie points. Opera Mini may have snuck around the restriction on JavaScript engines other than Apple's standard-issue version of WebKit by rendering pages on Opera's servers, rather than on the phone itself. What Opera ends up rendering is its own compressed OBML, not JavaScript, which is where it gets its famous server-side acceleration.
Is Opera fast and stable enough to grab a little chunk of Safari's (currently 100%, I suppose) iPhone browser market share? I like Safari, but I can't wait to download Opera Mini and find out.
Update: Opera Mini hasn't hit the iTunes store yet, and even our sources at Opera are having trouble getting an ad-hoc copy. They did confirm it will be in the App Store soon, though, and they'll download it then.
Update 2: A source at Opera gave us the following comment on what Opera planned to do if the app had been rejected: "We believed wholeheartedly that Apple would approve Opera Mini. As far as I know, there was no Plan B."
[via PCMag]
Apple approves Opera Mini browser for iPhone originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 22:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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