Opera Mini for iPhone was officially submitted to the Apple iPhone App store today.

A select few first saw it at Mobile World Congress 2010 in February. Now, the browser is taking its first big step towards giving users a new way to browse on the iPhone.

Apple could try to stop Opera, to maintain control of its Internet browsing function, a key behind the success of the iPhone.

Opera said it saw no reason why its Mini browser should be rejected. The company claims that the Opera Mini for iPhone is powering through Web pages up to six times faster than Safari. In addition, due to server-side rendering, Opera Mini compresses data by up to 90 percent before sending it to the phone, resulting in rapid page loading and more Web per MB for the end user.

Opera Mini is the world?s most popular mobile Web browse. The browser has been installed to more than 50 million mobile phones worldwide, Opera claims.