Apple sent out a message to all the iPhone apps developers through its Developer Connection blog. To protect the user experience of its consumers, Apple has announced that it would return the app from the app store if it uses location based information to helps mobile marketers for target marketing. Though it encourages developers to use the core location framework but it should only be used for information such as local whether, finding a restaurant or locating an ATM.
Source: iPhone Buzz
If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. 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.
Mobile advertising has been growing well and mobile advertising industry is said to grow at a very fast rate this year. This restriction from Apple could be a huge blow to the mobile advertisers as Apple constitutes a large section of mobiles owned in US.
Vonage World Mobile will now provide customers with unlimited mobile international calls to more than 60 countries for one flat monthly rate as they call from their mobile device. For making the call, the caller need not buy any international calling card or type in special prefixes or pin codes. Instead they simply launch a Vonage app and talk to their peers. Vonage will cover 20 more countries than Skype which might give it a little upper hand however its Blackberry, iPod Touch and iPhone centric application and also Skype already providing the service at $12.95 a month service, the offer may not succeed to lure the market and customers.
Google will reportedly sell its phone directly to customers as well as through retailers. That suggests the search giant may not have a network partner on board, and would sell unsubsidized phones instead. Phones sold outside of the carrier system means the Google phone could cost as much as $500, and would have to run on a SIM-friendly GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile.