Opera may debut on iPhone soon

The most successful browser in the mobile market, Opera Mini, may be making its way onto the iPhone in the near future. On Tuesday, Opera Mini for iPhone was officially submitted to the Apple iPhone App store for approval.

After showing a sneak peek of the browser in Barcelona in February, the Norwegian firm has now made a video available to the general public, showing off Opera Mini’s “fast like a rocket” capabilities, billed as six times faster than Safari on the iPhone.

“Due to server-side rendering, Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90 per cent before sending it to the phone, resulting in rapid page loading and more web per MB for the end user,” the company said. “Those familiar with iPhone roaming charges will relish Opera Mini’s ability to deliver more for less, giving users the web they want quickly, without, the high costs.”

Ah, now here’s the catch. The video does indeed make Opera Mini look blazingly fast, but this server side compression technology is likely based on Opera Turbo – a box that Opera sells to operators to stick on their networks to improve the mobile web experience. So what happens if the operator in question doesn’t have the box installed? Will users get a slower experience?

Saying that, server side compression is quite popular among mobile operators, but is one implementation of the technology compatible with all browsers? Still, Opera Mobile is already installed on more than 50 million handsets worldwide, so it’s a safe bet that a good number of carriers use Opera Turbo.