Editor’s note : Is Apple going too far with its restrictions on developers? Alistair Goodman thinks so and explains why in this guest post. He is the CEO of 1020 Placecast , a location-based mobile advertising startup. Apple’s recent behavior bears an increasing resemblance to carriers with respect to the walled garden they are creating around the iPhone. Restricting applications, restricting the use of location on the device, blocking Flash , and now potentially taking advertising in house—these moves are taken from the carrier’s playbook with the hope of locking out meaningful competition. Ironically, Apple may very well become the barrier to open innovation in mobile in much the same way as carriers have been before the iPhone came along. What is clear from the announcement to developers last week about plans to deny some apps that deliver location-based advertising is that Apple intends to control the flow of marketing dollars on the iPhone. Less clear are their plans for sharing the wealth with the ecosystem—but if you look closely at acquisitions like Placebase, key hires and patent filings, what emerges is a potentially more ominous view of a company that can only compete in the direct advertising business head-to-head with Google by seizing control of location-based advertising. Location is now widely understood to be the key to successful mobile advertising because where a consumer is in the physical world and at what the time they are there is such a strong predictor of consumer behavior and intent. “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,” says Apple. While they have yet to entirely exclude developers and ad networks from the equation, their broader strategy around location-based programs certainly has the potential to do just that. Consider the following: Apple’s acquisition of Placebase was not just about replacing Google Maps (with their Pushpin product). Placebase also is an aggregator of location-based content like neighborhood boundaries, census data and business listings, just like Navteq. These are the initial building blocks of a platform that indicates points-of-interest to a consumer when they are on their iPhone in a specific location. (Apple, like Google, has not yet cracked the problem of “location intelligence” – but this is just a starting point… more on that later in this piece) Apple’s $275 million acquisition and staffing up at Quattro is a clear signal that they are ramping up mobile advertising sales to go head-to-head with Google. In Europe, for example, Apple has just hired former Microsoft sales manager Theo Theodorou to lead their sales effort, and Todd Tran, previously a senior executive at WPP’s Group M, to be general manager. Integrating Quattro into Apple gives it the ability to target audiences and deliver

Originally posted here:
Back to the Future: How Apple is Becoming More Like a Carrier Every Day