As of today, Opera Mini has been approved for distribution through Apple’s App store. This browser is already in use by over 50 million users worldwide, providing lightning fast mobile browsing by compressing data by about 90 percent before it ever sends the content to your device. This means you waste less bandwidth and your pages should pop up on your little screen much faster.
Not only will the Opera Mini browser speed up your mobile browsing in general, but it also helps you save money on your data bill. The change in browsing speed will be especially noticeable if you’re forced to use a slower data network like the 2G Edge.
Even though Opera won out in the end, the process of getting accepted wasn’t as simple as you might think. Apple is pretty strict about what it allows into the App store. Especially apps that potentially replace Apple’s own offerings. In this case, they could have denied Opera Mini based on the fact that Safari is also a mobile web browser (even though they had previously accepted other browsers).
Besides creating an outstanding product that would actually be a huge benefit to iPhone customers, Opera put up a website that provided a live countdown until Mini was either accepted or rejected. We covered this back in March. 20 days, 8 hours, and 31 minutes later, Opera Mini was finally made available in the App store.
Did Opera’s strategy make a difference, or did Apple simply recognize that Opera Mini would be a useful App for their customers? We probably won’t ever find out for sure, but I’d like to think so. While it is at Apple discretion what they allow into the App store, some of their policies have been very upsetting to developers and customers alike and this move by Opera was either going to end in Opera Mini being accepted or possibly in some type of litigation.
Even now, Apple has started informing existing iPad developers that they cannot use the word “Pad” in their applications. Not “iPad” or anything specific like that, just the generic word “Pad.” If you want the new Opera Mini browser, feel free to download it (for free) via iTunes.