The Norwegian company that makes the Opera Internet browser said on Tuesday that its software had been approved for use on the iPhone, making it the first browser that competes with Apple’s own software to gain full access to the device.
The Opera Mini browser will be available as a free download for the iPhone and the iPod Touch by Wednesday.
The software, which promotes faster browsing by compressing Internet data before displaying it on a mobile device, will be available on the iPhone and iPod Touch by Wednesday.
In the United States, the Opera Mini browser is primarily found on the BlackBerry. Opera, which said it had 50 million users of its mobile browser before the announcement, planned to give away the Opera Mini at Apple’s application store.
The distribution through Apple would help Opera generate more revenue from the advertising and search engines that the company builds into its browser.
“This is certainly good news for us and this will help us expand tremendously in the United States,” said Tor Odland, a spokesman for Opera, a company that was created in 1995 and has 800 employees. “We are basically on every other type of device in the world and this covers a big hole for us.”
Apple already offers several browsers, like Incognito, Aquari and Shaking Web, besides its own Safari browser at the iPhone app store. But all of those use Safari’s own software rendering engine or other Apple components.
Opera Mini is the first browser, Mr. Odland said, that has been approved to use its own software engine and components on the iPhone.
The approval came after Opera spent several months in negotiations with Apple. It submitted a formal application to Apple a few weeks ago, Mr. Odland said.
Although sales have been rising, Opera has been struggling to maintain profit as it seeks distribution deals with the world’s big mobile phone and computer makers.
The Norwegian company filed an antitrust complaint in December 2007 with the European Commission challenging Microsoft’s practice of bundling its Internet Explorer browser into its Windows operating system.
The commission upheld Opera’s complaint, and Microsoft agreed to distribute the browsers of its rivals, including Opera, through Windows starting this year in Europe.
But the legal victory has not compensated for the effects of the economic slowdown in Europe and Asia, which, with rising operating costs, have weighed on Opera’s financial results.
The company’s net profit fell 88 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the latest results reported by Opera, to 4 million kroner ($680,000) from 31.1 million kroner a year earlier.
For all of 2009, Opera’s profit fell 65 percent, to 30.9 million kroner, even as revenue rose 59 percent, to 184.9 million kroner. Shares of Opera, which is based in Oslo, rose 3.6 percent Tuesday.
“The Apple announcement is good news for Opera, but I don’t think it will be a game-changer,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst in London for the research firm Gartner. “The browser experience with Safari on the iPhone is fine. That is partly why the iPhone is so popular. That will be tough competition for Opera and the other rival browsers.”
A version of this article appeared in pri
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