Your App Shop competes with the App Store, brings X-Rated apps to the iPhone

Steve Sheraton, a magician and software developer, has reportedly pulled off the neat trick of legally selling iPhone apps without going through Apple's iTunes App Store. Sheraton's product, Your App Shop, allows iPhone developers to create their own branded shops which deliver software to customers with none of the restrictions of Apple's store. In fact, one of the first shops to start using Your App Shop specializes in X-rated apps.

Sheraton is slated to present the big reveal of Your App Shop this week at the CES conference in Las Vegas. How it purports to legally avoid Apple's restrictions is still a mystery, and all the press releases say is that it's based on an "existing yet little-known technology." Sheraton's own development resumé includes novelty apps like iBeer and iSoda. With the real App Store still doing business like gangbusters - it just hit 3 billion app downloads - it'll be interesting to see whether Apple's legal department makes a move to protect the store's monopoly from Your App Shop.

[via AppScout]

Tags: apple, appstore, CES, iphone, steve sheraton, SteveSheraton, your app shop, YourAppShop