Location-based iPhone ads being banned by Apple

Something is brewing up over with Apple since they’ve bought a firm last month that offers a platform for distributing advertising to mobile handsets. Apple bought Quattro Wireless for $275 million after seeing Google’s announcement in buying AdMob, a mobile display advertising provider, for $750 million back in November. Now it seems that Apple is telling developers that they will refuse any approvals for a submitted app if it uses the iPhone’s GPS to distribute location-based advertising. This move may be considered a bit brash; especially when the company did not give a definitive reason for the ban. Instead, an announcement on the iPhone Dev Center states that apps with features based on an iPhone user’s location must provide “beneficial information.” Apple has gone on to say, “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.” There’s no doubt that a lot of money is at stake for advertisers and publishers when it comes to delivering ads based on a mobile phone user’s GPS location – Apple seemingly is preventing developers from entering the market right now. Who knows what’s in store down the road in this competitive market.

source: Information Week via Textually