Opera Mini Coming to iPhone, Apple Users Rack Up 7M Requests for Flash

From DailyTech: Norway-based Opera Software ASA's mobile browsers -- Opera Mini 4 (currently in beta for Mini 5) and Opera Mobile 10 -- are the world's most used cell phone browsers. One of the key challenges to Opera's mobile market share over the past couple years has been Safari, the browser used on the iPhone.

Traditionally Apple did not allow third-party browsers on the iPhone. It recently relaxed these restrictions allowing third-party browsers -- but only those based on webkit. Now Opera has offered a sneak peak of Opera Mini on the iPhone, leaving many unanswered questions.

Opera Mini is based on the Presto layout engine, not Webkit, and is underpinned by Java ME API calls. Opera has already been welcomed on less unrestrictive platforms, such as Google's Android OS (which uses an emulation layer to translate the Java API calls to appropriate Android API calls). However, it seems pretty amazing if Apple actually allows Opera Mini -- a huge threat to its big mobile browsing market share -- on the iPhone.

Jon von Tetzchner, Co-founder, Opera Software, speaking to the press at the 2010 Mobile World Conference (MWC) in Barcelona, certainly spoke about the preview as if it were for a sure-to-be-released product, though. He stated, "We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event. This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer."

For iPhone users looking to cut potential data costs and speed up page load times, Opera's compression technology and easily switchable image quality settings should help the browser outpace Safari if it indeed makes it onto the iPhone. Other key features include tabs, Speed Dial, and a password manager.

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