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Opera has submitted its Opera Mini browser to Apple's approval process for the Apple Store (iTunes). They are even holding a contest to guess the approval date. Yet the question "will it EVER be approved" has still not been adequately answered.

To celebrate the submission of Opera Mini to the Apple store and, most likely, to put some pressure on Apple as well, Opera has launched a contest (“count-up”) to guess when the app will be approved. The prize, is, as expected, an iPhone.

submitting 2 steve

Apple has a stated policy of not accepting applications that compete with its core apps, including the browser Safari. However, unlike Opera Mobile, which is a fully fledged browser, similar to its multiplatform cousins, Opera Mini is an application that passes all requests through Opera servers, where images and pages are “slimmed down” and reformatted for mobile browsing. Opera Mini is the most popular mobile browser, having recently passed the 50 million mark.

Guessing the approval time in itself is tough, as developers have been complaining for quite some time of unnecessary wait times. In its approval process, Apple acts not unlike a night club, keeping people outside in inclement weather just so that even more people show up and then they feel victorious when they make it in. Recently, Apple responded to some of that frustration buy introducing a queue app:

Marco Arment (via 6ix Passions) has his own theory explaining the long application queue:

I have a different theory: The delay is intentional. I think Apple has found some good reasons for making app developers wait at least a few days before they spend a second of their time reviewing it. My best guess is that a lot of developers find new bugs, cancel their submissions, and upload new binaries within a certain amount of time on average, and Apple doesn’t want to review them twice. Or they just don’t want developers to be able to issue new versions more than once every week or two to prevent gaming the (broken) “Newest” ranking.

a li’l history

Opera has a long history of taking on the bully and winning – sort of – if by winning you understand “making  them hurt with no benefit”. Though stubbornly stuck at an extremely low market penetration (2% by the best estimates), they have indeed a far superior product. It’s strengths – speed, good resources allocation – are particularly visible and necessary on the mobile platforms, which explains their ruling of that niche. This is why the stakes are very high for Opera and a lot hinges on Apple’s approval: if more regular consumers get to know it, they will make significant inroads on the desktop. Most of their die-hard customers are still experts who understand its features and are able to use it at its full potential.

There have been persistent rumours many years ago that Opera will be bought by Microsoft. Quite possibly, Microsoft tried to do so but Opera refused. Shortly thereafter, Opera discovered that Microsoft was discriminating against it buy serving defective pages to those using Opera browser, thus sabotaging it. Opera then released the Bork! edition in protest, which on MSN website replaced everything with Bork. They then filed a complaint with EU (/.1, /.2, cw) which ended up costing Microsoft $2 cool billions.

Will Apple concede on its own, or will Opera have to twist its arm (again)?

Sources / More info: opera-contest-blog, opera-countup, Marco-Arment-app-queue, approval-how-long, approval-pain, apple-queue, opera-not-yet, techcrunch-opera-mini, wired-opera-mini, softpedia-opera-mini, mashable-opera-mini-50M, mashable-opera-mini-iphone, opera-press-release, softpedia-opera-adoption, ro-history, yt-opera-mini