In a surprise, MacRumors has announced Apple has begun approving third party web browsers for the iPhone in the last 24 hours.

For those of you hoping to see Firefox or Opera or IE 6 (lmao, just kiddin) on the iPhone, you might get your wish.

This is yet another mellowing of Apple in its strictness about iPhone apps, but if you look, it had already allowed some form of third party browsers in the App Store. NetNewsWire for instance has a web browser built-in (which is freakin’ wonderful coz you can read a full article without leaving the app).

Of the browsers released so far, one that caught my eye is WebMate:Tabbed Browser ($0.99) -  which is described as simplifying “browsing by queuing up all the links you click on, then allowing you to view them one by one when you’re ready.” That is a feature I would really appreciate when reading news sites.

Hopefully, it won’t be long before we see what Mozilla can do with the iPhone.