As the Holiday season approaches, all major iPhone app developers tune in their strategy to ride high on the festive atmosphere. Christmas holidays have previously seen a huge jump in App Store sales with buyers benefitting from discounted prices whereas developers vying to occupy the top slots in the charts. In what could be called as a Christmas bonanza for app buyers this season, prices of iPhone apps are seriously coming down for the holiday period, owing to an intensified price battle between app stores. It all started with EA (Electronic Arts) slashing prices last week. EA has brought down the prices of over 70 iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad games to as low as 99 cents.

The prices of some of the popular games are-

iPhone/iPod touch Games:

• Battlefield: Bad Company 2, 99¢
• Cause of Death: Can You Catch The Killer?, 99¢
• Heroes Lore III, $1.99 → 99¢
• High Caliber Hunting, $2.99 → 99¢
• Pictureka!, $1.99 → 99¢
• Reckless Racing, 99¢
• Mirror’s Edge, $4.99 → 99

iPad Games:

• SimCity Deluxe for iPad, $6.99 → 99¢
• Need For Speed Hot Pursuit for iPad, $9.99 → 99¢
• Need For Speed Shift for iPad, $9.99 → 99¢
• Madden NFL 11 By EA Sports for iPad, $12.99 → 99¢
• Mirror’s Edge for iPad, $9.99 → 99¢

Source- Toucharcade

The strategy caused ripples across the iPhones application development industry compelling other companies to follow suit and lower prices. In the past few weeks, new apps hitting the stores have been priced as low as 99 cents. On December 23, Apple will freeze its apps charts and prices of top 200 games will remain same over the Holidays, the period which sees a huge jump in app sales. With the battle among iPhone app developers getting fiercer, iPhone users are sure to have a Merry Christmas!

Apple has just launched iAd Producer, a new tool for iPhone app developers. The app will really simplify iAds creation for the company’s mobile advertising platform. It will allow developers to create sleek and interactive iAds for iOS on their Mac through a step-by-step ad creation process.

iAd Producer makes it easy for you to design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd. iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd to make creating beautiful, motion-rich iAd content as easy as point and click.

For advanced developers, iAd Producer offers sophisticated JavaScript editing and debugging, along with a powerful extension mechanism that enables them to create and re-use their own page templates and components.

The Apple iAd Producer is loaded with several key features like a Visual Designer that gives the developers access to all the essential components of iAd creation in a single window. It also provides complete workflow for content creation in addition to powerful editing feature tools. iAd Producer also provides iPhone developers with several Page Templates to create attractive mobile advertisements. The Component Library provides general interface components such as buttons, switches and sliderset., as well as CoverFlow views and Carousel without the developers having to write a single code. App developers can make the ad content more effective with its Pre-built animations and effects feature.

The Simulator — on your Mac or your iOS device will let you test drive and perfect your iAds.  The Asset library available in the application will help developers to manage all the visual assets like images, movies and fonts. Advanced iPhone developers can make use of the Advanced JavaScript Editing features available in iAd Producer for auto-completion, syntax coloring, and auto-indent. Project Validation in the application reviews and ensures that the content is ready for submission to the mobile advertising network. JavaScript Debugging enables setting breakpoints in your JavaScript code and JavaScript “minification” and concatenation helps app developers to optimize the files.

The introduction of iAd Producer will simplify the ad content creation process. It is also aimed at reaching a wider constituency of advertisers and making iAd mobile advertising program even attractive for iPhone app developers.

Source- Apple Official Website

A recent report by open-first suggests that iPhone Developers are making more money from the App development industry than they actually expected initially. The survey was conducted between August 30th and September 10th and the takeaways proved to be very interesting. In the survey 48 percent of iPhone application developers said that the amount of cash they make from the Apple App Store has exceeded their expectations.

The survey consisted of a detailed questionnaire and a follow up via a phone call. 110 iPhone developers participated in the contest and about 28% of them were not happy with the monetary returns. However 99% of them confirmed that they will continue publishing apps to the app store. This is another proof that iPhone app industry is blooming and it will continue to churn out money for developers.

Here we have another report which might encourage iPhone developers make their next application useful for social media users. FaceBook the worlds most famous social networking site has crossed 100 Million iPhone monthly users. This is phenomenal and very clearly agrees with the last Morgan Stanley Mobile report that more and more internet users will be accessing their favorite social networking sites from the comfort of a mobile device.

The other reason the app has got so many downloads is the fact that the application is quick to load and also free to download from the app store. The huge success of facebook for iPhone gives clear message to iPhone developers to start making social media mobile apps which help people aggregate, organize and filter content.

There has been lot of talk about the failure of compatibility of iPhone 3G, 3GS and iPod 2nd and 3rd generations with iOS 4. Apple has launched an update iOS 4.0.2 which is considered to be Apple’s patch to compatibility problems faced by lower versions of the OS.

Also the update is supposed to fix security vulnerability associated with viewing malicious PDF files. The other possible fix is the iproximity sensor glitch which many users were waiting for. Now even developers can be confident that iOS 4 apps can be developed keeping iPod and and iPhone 3G in mind and users who already upgraded to the iPhone need not regret in any way.

Everyone right now might be dissing the iPhone and all those big SmartPhone companies because of the loss in reception due to the death grip. But not many except the experts at Tawkon have looked at the issue from the radiation point of view. Tawkon developers of world’s first Cellphone radiation measurement application has noted that the cellphone radiations have increased in large way when the SmartPhone was held a bit tightly.

Tawkon released a video in their blog demonstrating how radiation levels push hard when the grip of death comes in to play. The video shows how all the major smartphones increase their radiation levels when the phone is subjected to pressure.

The Jail break app was an aHa moment to me and I am sure many iPhone 4 handsets are ready for some further experimentation. One of the most appealing feature in the new iPhone is the FaceTime feature which typically runs on Wi-Fi. But the FaceTime application can now on 3G connection too. This is possible by virtue of Cydia app called My3G a unique application which is built to make Wi-Fi apps run on 3G. So if you Jailbreak your iPhone 4 and install your app then you need not wander around for those feeble Wi-Fi signals. However the video quality again depends upon strength of 3G connection and the video quality sometimes may not be as much you expect it to be.

Check the video below to see the app in action.

We have got lot of emails from few of our developer friends requesting us to point out to few free resources which would benefit iPhone application developers. As a site which gives updates and news on iPhone application development we felt we should help developers with this. So enjoy the list and drop in a comment there after —

Free resources for iPhone Developers

1. cocos2D-iPhone : A framework to develop 2D games for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
2. iPhone application Development course by Stanford university
3. iPhone Application Development – A blog which covers tips, reviews and news which would iPhone developers would die to know.
4. iPhone Flow -A good developer place to get the best links and tutorials in the iPhone app development industry.
5. iPhone Developers SDK forum – Join the busiest forum and be part of the iPhone community.
6. iPhone Development blog – A blog maintained by Jeff LaMarche a senior programmer and iPhone developer. You shouldn’t miss this.
7. How to make apps – Another nice site for iPhone and iPad developers.
8. iPhone Developer Tips – Another resourceful place developers shouldn’t miss checking out.
9. iPhone SDK Articles – A useful series of iPhone SDK Tutorials.
10. Macrumors forums – The famous MacRumors site has a section which would keep the developers glued.
11. Official iPhone Dev Center Page – If you are a newbie then this is a place to start.

I know I need not mention about iPhone developer labs because I have always delivered what developers needed.

Finally Apple has pitched the iAds advertising network for iPhone developers. Although the website revealed less about the new Ad network which would help iPhone developers monetize their applications, we have got a bunch of important news to keep you interested even though the company suggested developers to contact the company in order to get further details.

Few of the features of the new iAds is that developers can exclude Ads from competitor and also low quality and irrelevant Ads. Apple has also mentioned that the Ads will be targeting the right audience and will be country specific. iPhone developers will be charged 25 cents per click and brand advertisers will be charged $2.00 per-click.

Few weeks ago we covered a very important news on Tawkon the world’s only application which notifies a user about cellular radiation. The news mentioned Apple’s invitation to Tawkon developers to Cupertino which was made shortly after the developers created a similar application for Blackberry. But Apple has once again shunned the iPhone application for a reason not revealed yet.

Apple’s behavior towards the cellular radiation application has irked resentment in many iPhone users who seriously wish to know the radiation levels they are subjected to when they use the phone. I always believe people deserve the right not to have radiation statistics hidden from them. Not only did the iPhone developer create an application which shares SAR levels but also an app which shows real-time gauge to see when they’re exposed to higher and lower levels of radiation. The Tawkon application minimizes radiation exposure of a cellphone at any given time.

I feel Apple’s response to the developers plea for appstore approval is a very damaging in users interest and eventually will cause people doubting Apple’s transparency letting know its radiation levels.

If you want to help Tawkon out in making it get download able to Apple users then you can sign this email and send it to Apple within a single click.