The Amazon Kindle is an amazing piece of kit, and one which has brought the age-old hobby of reading books bang up-to-date. But the e-book reader is also an expensive piece of kit, retailing for $359. Which makes the free Kindle for iPhone app an essential download.

The App Store has been an absolute revelation. With over 500 million downloads already, Apple itself is making money, and so are the thousands of developers, both amateur and professional. Meanwhile, the iPhone has started to compete with more established games consoles such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. So who can blame Apple for wanting to put these two phenomenons together.

There are now over 15,000 iPhone apps available from the App Store. Some are good, some are bad, some are fun, and some are serious. Between them all, they’ve been downloaded over 500 million times, but the individual sales tallies for each app vary wildly. Some are hugely popular, making their developers small fortunes. iShoot is the latest success story.

A new iPhone app called iSteam has launched. This app uses the technology of the Apple device exquisitely, but at the end of the day there’s also no actual point to its existence. This started me thinking (always a dangerous scenario) about whether these useless but pretty apps are actually worth the time and trouble needed to create them.

The Apple iPhone has been a huge success, bringing innovative touchscreen technology to the masses and making Apple lots of money. However, it’s not exactly a cheap option, with the handset itself costing a tidy sum and the monthly contract making owning an iPhone an expensive pastime. Cue the iPhone Nano.

It seems not a day goes by when one company or another doesn’t release an iPhone app intended to make us part with our cash. Amazon is the latest to take this approach, releasing its iPhone app for free in the hopes that iPhone users everywhere will buy more stuff they don’t need, and can’t afford anyway.

The Apple iPhone 3G is a brilliant piece of technology, combining all the normal uses of a cellphone with the capability to go online, download apps, play games, and much more besides. But Apple still felt the need to exaggerate some aspects of the device in its UK launch adverts. Which have now been banned.

Developers and consumers alike are still figuring out the iPhone App Store. The applications being made available are slowly improving in quality, and buyers are qualifying their purchases more, not just buying the latest app to find its way on to the marketplace. And pricing is also changing, with a lot of newly-released apps increasing in price.

The Apple iPhone is an intelligent and technologically advanced piece of kit, but is it so advanced and intelligent that it can magically take a raunchy picture of its owner, attach it to an email, and then send it to a stranger?

IPhone applications are rapidly becoming big business, with companies making some fast and easy money from having a good idea and then selling it through the iPhone App Store. But there’s another trend emerging, with companies giving away free iPhone apps which are purely for advertising products. And as is usually the case, Hollywood has been quick to react.