Link: http://news.ecombizcenter.com

Apple announced that it would prevent third-party iPhone developers using its Core Location framework from designing apps that deliver targeted ads to iPhone users. Normally, the Core Location framework is used to build apps that leverage the user’s location, such as ones that locate restaurants or other nearby points of interest. Apple’s reported attempt to purchase mobile display specialist AdMob? in 2009 suggests that the company could be exploring ways to port advertising on its mobile devices, although that rumored maneuver could have also been part of the escalating battle between Apple and Google over the smartphone space.

Apple announced on Feb. 3 that it will prevent third-party iPhone developers from leveraging the popular smartphone’s GPS to display mobile advertising. In a news item on its developer site, Apple announced that it has placed particular feature restrictions on its Core Location framework, which allows developers to build applications that geo-locate users and deliver information to them there.

The framework can be used for apps that pinpoint nearest restaurants and other points of interest, for example, or to deliver local weather. But Apple also wants to prevent that technology from being used to create location-based mobile advertising.

“If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information,” reads the posting on Apple’s developer site. “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.”