Citing a “a person familiar with the technology,” BusinessWeek reports that the forthcoming software update “includes features that, if activated by Apple, may let users share software with one another.” The publication goes on to speculate that such a feature could even be expanded to allow iPhone users to generate a commission “when they’ve induced someone else to make a purchase.”
The ability to try applications before buying them has been a sore point with App Store shoppers. In an attempt to address this, some app developers have released “lite” versions of their apps that are free or close to free and include only a few levels or features of the full-fledged version.
This, however, adds a few more steps to the purchasing process for a potential buyer, since a second trip to the App Store must be made to purchase the full version. Additionally, the user will probably want to delete the lite version from the iPhone to free up memory and avoid confusing the two apps, which often have similar icons.
Apple has seeded five betas of iPhone Software 3.0 to date in which numerous discoveries pertaining to future software and hardware features have been made, but Wednesday’s claim is the first to suggest application sharing capabilities will be amongst the software’s highlights.
Apple reportedly declined to comment on the matter, which was not a shock really.
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