Apple Won't Allow Opera iPhone Browser

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Posted October 30, 2008 at 8:13pm by iClarified

The New York Times has published an online article called, "Opera Sings an Ode to Browsers Everywhere" in which Opera co-founder and chief executive, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner comments on the iPhone.

Mr. von Tetzchner said that Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.

Daring Fireball's Joh Grubar speculates that it could be due to the JavaScript interpreter or more likely Apple not wanting any competition for Safari.

I don’t see how this is surprising at all. One can argue about whether it’s a good policy for Apple not to allow third-party web browsers on the iPhone, but unlike other rejections, this one is not arbitrary. The iPhone SDK Agreement clearly forbids writing your own JavaScript interpreter. I’m not sure what Apple would do if someone tried to publish a third-party iPhone browser based on the system’s version of WebKit, but a browser based on a third-party engine is clearly not allowed.

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Macopoulos - October 31, 2008 at 10:31am

I know one thing. I use Opera on the Nintendo DS and it rocks there, i used it on a friends Pocket PC, rocks also, used years on my linux box.. r4x0r3d hard! I just can't understand why, for some javascript reason? crap

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Awayze - October 31, 2008 at 8:51am

If apps get rejected from App Store, they should ALL come to Cydia :-)

end_one - October 31, 2008 at 3:01am

"Hello ... I'm Apple and I made iPhone ... It's great peace of hardware but you have to run my crappy browser ... even if the third-party one is 10times better ..." You'll see ... Just like anything else, there will soon be way to damn Safari to hell and use Opera instead :) At least I hope :)

asa - October 31, 2008 at 12:21am

Well Opera will just have to come out with a phone.....In the end apple can do what they want...Seems kind of a waste of time on operas part to think they would allow them to run another browser when it states clearly in the sdk TOS. Anyway, point them over to cydia and let it be downloaded from there.