Opera is the latest victim of Apple's policy of policing which applications users are allowed to run on their very own phones. Phones they've paid quite a lot of money for, in fact.

After spending no doubt a fair amount of time and effort to create a special version of Opera for the iPhone, it's been told that it can't release it through the App Store.

Obviously, having systems in place to stop bad software getting on your phone is a good thing - but blocking apps just because they appear to compete with your own software seems a little bit heavy handed.

Since every iPhone comes with Safari pre-installed anyway, it's not like Apple is even losing out by letting Opera run on its precious handset. It all seems a bit petty - especially given that some customers might actually want an alternate browser, no matter how good Safari is.

Of course, Opera is still available for both S60 and UIQ so if you fancy giving it a go on your Nok instead, head on over to Opera now and pick the flavour that suits your handset.