iPhone version of Opera Mini Will Not be Coming to the App Store

July 2009

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Saul Hansell from New York Times who had interviewed Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera had quoted him saying that the iPhone version of the App Store was rejected by Apple has got some clarifications from Mr. von Tetzchner on the issue.

Therefore, if you were an Opera fan and were hoping for their iPhone app to make it to the App Store, then there is some bad news as Opera has halted the development of their app due to iPhone's SDK agreement.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, co-founder and CEO of Opera said that:

"the development of the iPhone browser was more an “internal project” of some engineers than a product that management was committed to introducing. Indeed, development was halted after the company looked at the details of the license agreement in Apple’s software development kit and realized that it would not be permitted."

He also wrote in the email:

“We stopped the work because of the prohibitive license,”

Apple has previously rejected iPhone Apps like Podcaster because it duplicated the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.

Since Opera Mini for other mobile platforms is developed using Java which is not supported on the iPhone, there were speculations that Opera would have to port Opera Mini to C and Objective-C APIs to be able to submit their iPhone app to the App Store. Mr. von Tetzchner has clarified that Opera has a version that runs “native” which does not need a Java environment.

So this should resolve the controversy once and for all. Unfortunately, for all the Opera fans out there, the iPhone version of Opera Mini will not be coming to the App Store anytime soon.

What do you think about Opera's decision? Tell us in the comments below.

[via New York Times]

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