At the end of last week, rumor had it that Apple Incorporated had announced they would not be releasing a version of the Opera Browser that had been specially developed for the iPhone on the gadget, because it would have competed with the company’s Safari browser.

The main deal-breaker was reported to had been Opera Mini’s (the name of the browser) duplicate functionality,  feature that enables the software to replicate the core functionality of Apple’s iPhone and iPod devices, which would have violated the AppStore’s rules.

Nevertheless, on Monday, Director of Corporate Communications at Opera Tor Odland revealed that the company had not yet submitted Opera Mini to Apple’s AppStore, adding though that such a move was being planned for the future.

His statement comes in sharp contrast with the one Opera Chief Executing Officer (CEO) Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner made last week, saying that Apple Inc. had refused to allow the version of the browser to be launched on the iPhone.

Opera Mini is said to be able to bring faster browsing experience to iPhone users, along with increased security features and the capacity to better fit a web page into the device’s display, through the browser’s small screen rendering technology.

Still, even in the light of what Tor Odland has recently revealed, the reason for which Apple had allegedly refused the release of Opera Mini on their product has its grounds in some past actions of the company.

This September, Apple did not agree to using MailWrangler, a program that enabled users to have access more easily than before to multiple Gmail accounts, while during the same month, the Podcaster application got the boot from the company, which refused the offer to have podcasts downloaded to their iPhones via the aforementioned app.