Opera has announced today that its Opera Mini web browser for the iPhone has been approved by Apple for inclusion in the App Store and should show up for download within the next 24 hours. It will be a free download.

Opera Mini, with more than 50 million users worldwide, enables fast mobile Web browsing by compressing data by up to 90 percent before sending content to the device, resulting in significantly improved page loading. Users of the app will notice an uptake in speed, especially on slower networks such as the 2G Edge network. Surfing the Web with the Opera Mini App on iPhone and iPod touch will also help users save money because of its data compression capabilities. This will hold especially true while the user is incurring roaming charges.

Opera initially submitted the web browser to Apple last month. Some people did not think that the 3rd-party web browser would be accepted into the App Store since it will be directly competing with Apple's Safari web browser.