Apple is opening up the iPhone -- at least partly.
After engendering frustration from some customers and software makers, Apple has changed its policy to encourage independent developers to create programs for use on the iPhone.
Apple said that in February it would make available a developer's kit, which would allow independent software makers to more easily create mobile games, navigation systems, screen-shot capture programs and other tools.
Several weeks ago, Apple released an over-the-air update to the iPhone that erased programs made by independent developers and caused some phones to freeze up.
The company is not changing a policy that forbids users from unlocking the iPhone to use it with carriers other than AT&T, Apple said.
Steve Jobs, the company's chief executive, has said he wanted to keep some control over the iPhone's systems, consistent with Apple's customary practices, to preserve the user experience. But critics have said Apple has done so to a fault.
Apple realized that "it's time to stop this silly race to lock the iPhone because it's a lost battle," said Cyril Houri, the chief executive of Mexens Technology, maker of Navizon, a navigation system for mobile phones that, he said, 120,000 iPhone users had downloaded since Sept. 19.
The introduction of the developer's kit "is a positive development," Houri said.
In a letter posted on the Apple Web site, Jobs wrote that the company was seeking to balance the benefits of encouraging development of new software with protecting the phone from software bugs and malicious attacks.
"Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones -- this is simply not true," he wrote.
He added that given the advanced nature of the iPhone, "it will be a highly visible target."
"We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third-party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones," he wrote.
Michael McGuire, an analyst who follows Apple for Gartner, a market research firm, said that the developer kit came as little surprise and that Apple probably had planned one all along.
McGuire said the delay probably was wise, however, because it would have been difficult for Apple and AT&T -- its exclusive telecommunications partner -- to introduce the phone and control its quality while also managing relationships with independent software developers.
He said the fact that software developers had been developing products without cooperation from Apple and AT&T made the two companies realize that preventing the creation of independent software "was impossible to stop."
Apple's effort to wall off the iPhone from developers, and to prevent its unlocking, has led to a cat-and-mouse game with developers and hackers. Advocates of unlocking the iPhone and creating programs for it assert that they paid for the device and it belongs to them, not to Apple.
"If Apple does something where they remove everything I did on it, I have a feeling that Apple is kindly lending me a phone to make phone calls," Houri said.
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