To much surprise, Opera has announced that Apple has approved the Opera Mini mobile web browser for the iPhone and iPod touch. It will be available in the iPhone app store for free in the next 24 hours.

Opera’s mobile browser has been controversial — quite a lot of people have thought Apple would reject the app because Opera would compete directly with Apple’s Safari. Opera coded and submitted the application to the app store regardless, and turned it into a public event by putting up a time counter to count the time since they submitted to the app store.

We’ll definitely do a review of Opera’s mobile browser for the iPhone/iPod touch, and look forward to posting it soon.