5.2.10

Developers Working on Mobile Ad Apps Everywhere Weep this Weekend...

Apple is warning iPhone developers that applications built with features based on user location must provide "beneficial information," adding it will reject apps that incorporate location to deliver targeted advertising. A post on the iPhone Dev Center website encourages programmers to enhance their iPhone and iPod apps via the Core Location framework, which enables software to pinpoint users' whereabouts and deliver information like local weather and restaurant recommendations. "If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store," the post promises.

The iPhone Dev Center post is all the more interesting in light of Apple's January acquisition of mobile advertising network Quattro Wireless, a deal reportedly valued at about $275 million. Apple rival Google, which itself scooped up mobile advertising network AdMob in late 2009, called local services "hugely important" to the future of the mobile user experience during its recent Q4 earnings call, with Google product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg forecasting that location-based services will more deeply integrate with mobile advertising and commerce services in the "not too distant future.

From: "Apple vows to reject location apps geared for mobile advertising - FierceMobileContent."

Fascinating. Unless Apple builds in in-app advertising using someone they've acquired, this would be the *only* area of your app where they don't get a slice of the action per transaction.

Posted via web from Jen's Posterous

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