14 DAY TRIAL // Although Opera Software is confident it will see the mobile version of its web browser running on iPhones soon, a spokeswoman for the company has revealed that it hasn’t been in talks with Apple at all, and that the binary hasn’t been submitted to the App Store.
AppleInsider claims to have contacted Opera spokeswoman Falguni Bhuta, who said on Tuesday that Opera was only showing an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for the iPhone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for media and partners. Denying a report that claimed Apple and Opera were "working together" on the browser, Bhuta stated, "We haven't worked with Apple on it yet. We haven't submitted it to the App Store."
Falling in line with Softpedia’s own analysis on the matter, AppleInsider suggests there’s more than an offset chance that Apple will reject Opera Mini for iPhone. It points out that the Mac maker has rejected any non-WebKit third-party web browsers submitted to the App Store that might compete with its own web browser, the iPhone-native Safari. "The Cupertino, Calif., company has not indicated that it has changed its policies, suggesting that if Opera were to submit its browser, Apple would reject it," it notes.
And while Opera’s demonstrations of the unreleased browser showed it was six times faster than Apple's Safari when running over 3G, these results may also affect its chances of getting approved in the App Store, Softpedia believes. As noted in our previous report, cool features that Apple’s web browser doesn’t sport – tabs, Speed Dial, the password manager and bookmark syncing, the ability to restart with the same session, and others – should also make Opera a tad too competitive. It remains to be seen whether or not Apple is desperate to protect the small slice of the pie (market-share) it owns through Safari.