iPhone App Store coming on Monday

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the App Store in March and third-party applications delivered through the store should arrive Monday. (Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

The era of officially sanctioned iPhone applications should kick off on Monday.

That's the same day Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to take the stage at the Moscone Center to unveil the next-generation iPhone at the company's annual Worldwide Developers' Conference. A source at a software company that has been working on a native iPhone application tells us the company is getting ready to launch that application on Monday, which could also imply that Apple's App Store will be up and running that day.

The App Store is going to be the only way to get official third party iPhone applications onto your device.

Developers have been submitting their applications to Apple for testing and verification since the iPhone SDK became available, and in exchange for hosting and distributing the applications Apple is taking 30 percent of the revenue generated by sales of that application.

It also looks like the next iPhone will be sporting location-based services capabilities. The same source was able to confirm reports from earlier this week from GigaOm and Wired that the newest Apple device will have support for GPS technology, enabling the iPhone to get a precise fix on your location. The combination of GPS and faster networking speeds should allow for a whole range of location-aware applications to proliferate on the iPhone, as they have on other competing phones.