The iPhone not running Opera isn't a monopoly. The PS3 not running Nintendo DS games is not a monopoly. Companies have the freedom to create proprietary systems that run their own proprietary software, so long as it doesn't infringe another's copyright, or prevent others from competing fairly in the market.

In practice it behooves a company to extend a certain amount of freedom to developers in order to create more diversity and options for consumers, but it's not technically illegal for them to restrict such freedom, or impose limitations. Apple has always imposed very severe restrictions upon 3rd party development as a way of maintaining the image and experience of owning an Apple product.

One of Apple's reasons for limiting browsers on the iPhone is quite likely that they prefer people use Safari because it has been highly optimized for the iPhone "experience" as they wish to define it.

While they did open the app store to third-party browsers, they are built on Apple's webkit rendering system; in effect, Safari base code, re-skinned and re-tooled.

You're not likely to see major, well-known 3rd party browsers for the iPhone, since the development time, given the restrictive functionality, wouldn't be worth it (and the fact that the current iPhone processor is being throttled, making it less robust than it could be).

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