With the App Store Review Team’s undisguised animosity towards approving apps that “duplicate” innate functionality of the iPhone’s built-in applications a stark fact of the iPhone development scene, releasing a third-party web browser for the most widely adopted smartphone on the market is a risky proposition… but Opera’s going to try it anyway, having just announced that they will be previewing Opera Mini for the iPhone next week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Before Firefox and Chrome smudged a lot of their luster, Opera was one of the most cutting-edge browsers out there. In the last couple of years, though, most of Opera’s users are in the mobile phone sector: in fact, before the iPhone, Opera Mini was one of the only options out there for using a (relatively) full-featured browser on a mobile phone. A huge chunk of Opera’s money these days is made in the mobile phone and smartphone sector, so it’s no wonder they want to get their browser on the iPhone.
Unfortunately, Opera Mini is going to be at a marked disadvantage here. Even if it can get past the App Store approval process, Safari is allowed to run on the iPhone in the background while Opera will have to open and reload anew every time the user switches apps. Until Apple allows third-party apps to stay loaded in the background, I’m just not sure I see a market for another iPhone browser.
