Today Opera Software finally got its Opera Mini browser approved by Apple and therefor will be able to join the thousands of apps on the App Store.
This is of course a huge victory for Opera. As Opera Mini and Opera Mobile are already the leading browsers on the mobile market with the iPhone browser coming on second place mostly because until now it was the only alternative that iPhone users where allowed to use. Now that Opera has access to that market as well, things might change pretty drastically in the coming weeks.
But consumers are also winners in this round as this approval sets a precedence where Apple is willing to accept a software that competes directly with one of its core apps on the iPhone. Of course they are only following the footsteps of another popular Scandinavian app, Spotify, which not even a year ago was feared to be rejected from the App Store as it was in direct competition with iTunes.
Although all of this is good news for a more open and consumer friendly market with Apple, this might end up being yet another “two step forward, one step back” situation as just last week, Apple decided to edit the user agreement for app developers effectively limiting the tools allowed to build an app. Although Apple arguments that this clause has been edited in order to maintain the quality and stability of the apps on the iPhone and iPad, a lot of critics see it as a new means for Apple to tighten its control over the app market in general: if cross platform developer tools are not permitted anymore for the iPhone, hopefully (for Apple) developers will decide to focus more on the Apple apps and less on the competition and therefore make Apple’s mobile platform even more competitive.
Only time will tell if this is a good move on Apple’s side or not. And in the meantime, users of other smartphone platforms like Google Android or Nokia’s Symbian will just have to hope that developers are willing and are able to invest enough time to develop their apps to multiple platforms at the same time.
(this is a DoubleTwist commercial; yet another software developed by a Norwegian trying to challenge Apple.)
Posted on April 13, 2010
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