Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said earlier this year that revenue driven by the iPhone had been less than desired. A Zynga spokeswoman said Pincus was pleased with Apple’s latest move.

San Francisco-based online dating site Zoosk Inc., which integrates with social networks, makes much of its money off sales of virtual goods and services, like sending digital roses to a prospective date. It was preparing to release an iPhone application and is now reengineering it.

“Apple enabled us to import our current existing model into the iPhone platform,” said co-founder Alex Mehr. “By allowing in-application monetization, Apple made the iPhone platform an equivalent to social networks.”

That is a trend Hawkins and others want Apple to continue by providing for virtual currencies and allowing purchases below the current minimum of 99 cents. And where Apple goes, others are sure to follow, as competitor phone makers and carriers establish and expand their own app stores, Hawkins said.

“We’re excited about what’s going on at Apple because Apple is just the tip of a very big iceberg,” he said.

Shervin Pishevar, CEO of Palo Alto-based Social Gaming Network, a mobile gaming company currently focused on the iPhone that has about 100 employees globally, said Apple’s announcement was a “dream come true.”

“It creates an ecosystem similar to what’s on Facebook,” Pishevar said. “Now we can reach the mass audience with a free-to-play model. It really opens up the opportunity to build gaming companies on the iPhone that could reach hundreds of millions of dollars in micro-transactions.”