The last we heard about Opera’s attempts to get their browser onto the iPhone and iPod touch, the Opera people were busy showing it off at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but were yet to submit it for Apple's approval, with the general consensus of opinion being why bother anyway ‘cause you know it’s going to be rejected?! Now CNN is reporting that the Opera people are making much more positive noises at the South By Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, where Opera spokesman Thomas Ford demonstrated the Opera Mini browser and ventured that the browser would be submitted for Apple’s approval “very soon”.

The question still remains, though, are they wasting their time? As usual, Apple has made no comment on the matter, but CNN points out that Apple never approves apps that it feels duplicate something that the iPhone already does. According to CNN, Opera counters this by saying that Opera Mini and Apple’s Safari browser are very different from each other, with Mini able to download Internet pages very quickly, and Safari excelling at more complicated operations such as editing documents online. Hmm. I really can’t see that being a convincing enough argument for Apple, although you can't blame Opera for trying and it certainly would be great to see the browser on the iPhone.