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News is abound that Steve Jobs announced a non-widget based SDK for native third-party applications coming to fruition in February, 2008. Unfortunately, details are scarce, and it’s not worth people getting their hopes up just yet, because a major facet of Jobs’ philosophy towards third party applications is the “security” of the applications in lieu of the iPhone’s reputation being affected by viruses and other malware.

In effect, this implies that third party applications developed with this new SDK will require some sort of digital signature or other approval by Apple before they can be distributed to the masses. Likely, this means distribution exclusively through iTunes, and there’s a decent chance that this means there will be associated fees, akin to the costs associated with third-party applications developed for Danger’s Sidekick on the T-Mobile network.

In other words, it’s too soon to rejoice at Jobs’ announcement, and there’s a good possibility that the current crop of “hacked” native applications won’t be a crop to be destroyed by Apple’s corporate locusts after all.

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