So the big news today in the iTunes App Store is the inclusion of the Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone. It would seem many are quite surprised that Apple didn’t reject this from the store. After all why accept an application that is directly competing with Apple’s own built in Safari browser?

Opera Mini has the apparent advantage of speed over the iPhones native browser since all pages are rendered only after going through Opera’s optimization backend prior to being displayed on the device. This is all well and good but in the end… it just doesn’t matter. No one will use it. The speed advantages just aren’t apparent enough nor is Opera as tightly integrated into the iPhone as Safari is.

Now don’t get me wrong… I think Opera as a whole is an excellent product. They’ve pioneered many features that are now found across all the major web browsers… but I don’t see them making any headway into the iPhone browser market. It just doesn’t make sense. What’s available is just fine… there’s no need for an alternative. And that’s why Apple accepted the submission… because at the end of the day it doesn’t hurt them and if anything proves that applications like this, while great, just isn’t worth the time and effort to develop in the first place. Having said that though Opera Mini on many other portable devices looks and works fantastically… I guess if anything they can at least say that they have it on the iPhone platform… but like I said… it doesn’t matter.