The Bits blog is running a small profile of Opera right now. For the most part it’s fairly boring: Opera is a bit player (we know) that is making inroads in the mobile space with Opera Mini (again, we know).
Here’s something you may not know: Apple is blocking Opera from releasing the iPhone version of Opera Mini. So claims Opera’s CEO, Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner.
While that in and of itself may be news to some of you—it’s news to me, that’s for sure—we already know where Apple’s coming from. Apple has a policy that says, briefly, it won’t allow any application on the App Store that competes with one of its products. Since there’s already Safari on the iPhone we won’t be seeing any other Web browser there, Opera or otherwise.
Should we be mad at Apple? How much harm would it do to Apple’s bottom line to give people the choice of staying with Safari or giving Opera a shot?
I don’t get why Apple goes to the trouble to block things like this.
If Safari is superior, it’s the only browser people will use on the phone anyway. People will download Opera for kicks, and go back to Safari.
2Nate: The problem is that Opera is superior to Safari…
In your world maybe. Opera mini is on my Blackberry it absolutely stinks and is insecure. Sure do not want to use it for your banking as it tunnels in the clear thru Opera’s servers.
Opera Mobile, maybe.
But, this post is about Opera Mini.
I don’t see how they can get away with stuff like this. What if Microsoft decided to block any application that competes with their products? If Microsoft tried anything like this there would be anti-trust flags flying from every direction. I can see Apple getting into legal issues one of these days.
Microsoft did try something like this back in the late 1990s with several things it did to prevent Netscape Navigator and other browsers from being installed on computers, and the government slapped them back down with a huge antitrust lawsuit. But, the facts were much different. First, Microsoft had a huge monopoly in operating systems (it was Microsoft’s operating system monopoly that it was trying to protect illegally, according to the government), while Apple has a much smaller market share in the cell phone market and in the cell phone browser market. It is much harder to argue that this action is protecting any monopoly Apple has (other than browsers on the iPhone, which I doubt anyone could win).
I think the action is a stupid PR move and that it is somewhat anticompetitive, but probably not illegally so.
Is that so, Mikey? Find me something that refers to Microsoft “preventing Netscape Navigator and other browsers from being installed on computers”? The anti-trust lawsuit was about the fact that IE *shipped* with Windows and could not be uninstalled (according to MS), and thus gave Microsoft an unfair advantage. You could always install Netscape (or whatever you like) on Windows. That didn’t change, and hasn’t been argued in that anti-trust lawsuit. Get those facts straight.
Let’s be honest here: Apple has gotten away with this kinda crap for years, and mainly because they’re a “small fish” in an awfully big pond. The bigger and more successful that Apple is, however, the more they’ll have to deal with lawsuits that other big boys deal with — and crap like “blocking Opera from the AppStore” will not be tolerated.
Another reason why I dislike Apple.
I don’t see why apple does stuff like this. They try to act like they are all about “giving the people what they want” but they put restrictions on stuff like this. Just doesn’t make sense.
“They try to act like they are all about “giving the people what they want” but they put restrictions on stuff like this.”
That’s completely inaccurate. Apple has never been about giving users what they want. Apple has always forced changes on users unilatterally. Witness the forced switch to DisplayPort on the new MacBooks or the removal of floppy drives years ago.
Apple has always been heavy-handed about controlling what the user could do and some would say that’s why the Mac/iPhone experience is so much better than the alternatives. The minute the iPhone was unveiled people were complaining about missing features. How does that translate into “giving the people what they want”?
i think he meant that this is what apple thinks they’re giving you. they “think” you want no choice in browser, we’re idiots and if you did it would just confuse you. basically “father knows best” mentality.
maybe soon we can get it via JB
Yeah, well, I could never get Opera to install on my Blackberry. Tried time and time again. Maybe Apple was having the same problem? :p
More likely, Opera cannot do on the iPhone what Safari does? It would require Opera to conform to their standards for representing web pages in a way that integrates with the who iPhone way of doing things. Working with gestures, etc. Not that Apple isn’t happy about Safari being so integrated into the system, but I would never even bother with Opera on an iPhone anyway because there’s no way it’s going to be able to work with everything on the iPhone as well as Safari.
I would love to have opera mini on my iphone. Safari is simply poor design IMO. I have mine hacked….when can I get it?
apple actualy has let some browsers in the appstore just search browser retards
Apple does as much as they can as proprietary as they can. Can we hate them for it? Yes, absolutely. I’m a HUGE advocate of the open source community and while Apple’s SDK does allow for third party programs it’s FAR from open source. This is what makes Apple (in part of course) extremely successful.
Apple gets away with things like this because they’re pretty good at loophole jumping. They’re not saying they don’t want another browser on our iphone, they’re saying we don’t want anything that would compete with our native applications. They could throw all kinds of arguments to the wind on this one. It’s no different than, let’s say, Opera Mini trying to come to a standard LG flip phone or something like that. This type of software is closely regulated and extremely proprietary.
Why is this not in the realm of an antitrust? Because there’s plenty of competition out there. If IPhone was suddenly put on every carrier and consumed 90% of all phone sales, it might suddenly be an issue, but it’s hovering in the cellphone market along with windows mobile devices, blackberry (I’m not a blackberry guy but I think it’s RIM OS?), and a variety of other random, proprietary Cell Phone Operating Systems. They’re by no means sucking up the market in a monopoly…
You almost have to admire their cunning, even if it is sometimes unintentional.