Software maker Opera, based out of Norway, is hoping to turn up the heat on Apple and its App Store, by hoping to get its iPhone Web browser approved, according to PC World. The company announced Wednesday that they will launch a version of its mini browser for the iPhone next week, claiming that it will offer users much faster download speeds.
Opera said it would demo the iPhone version of the Mini Web browser at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. Opera is claiming that its software will be up to six times faster than Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch, due to the compression technology that gets used in the background.
The company is also claiming that the mini browser for the iPhone will cut data traffic by up to 90 percent, which could give wireless carriers some relief from high iPhone traffic on their data networks. This gets achieved by compressing text and images on Opera's servers before reaching the users' devices.
On the flip side though, Opera has yet to submit its app for approval to the App Store, which has a known history of saying "no way" to apps that duplicate functionality of native apps. But with the announcement, Opera is hoping to convince Apple into approving it.
Also, besides being quite similar to Safari in terms of functionality, numbers from StatCounter also show that Opera has the largest share in the mobile web browser market with over a 25 percent share, followed by Safari on the iPhone and iPod Touch who have 22 percent.
Image courtesy of Insidesocal.com
