With the popular microblogging site Twitter Friday announcing its plans pertaining to the acquisition of iPhone client Tweetie from Atebits, third-party developers are apprehensive that the announced move will kill their businesses.

In its announcement, Twitter revealed that Tweetie – the $2.99-priced app which helps users post Twitter messages via an Apple iPhone - will be re-named “Twitter for iPhone;” and will become a ‘free’ app to be available from the iTunes App Store in the coming weeks.

The third-party developers for Twitter are apparently unnerved at the thought that Twitter’s acquisition plans, as well as its addition of new features to the microblogging site, would eventually make their apps redundant.

Adding to the developers’ apprehensions was Twitter’s recent “official” label for a mobile app that it is developing together with Research In Motion for its BlackBerry smartphone.

Voicing the apprehensions of the developers and commenting on Twitter’s moves of late, developer Arnaud Meunier noted: “With these recent moves and announcements you're starting to realize (for the first time) lots of developer's fear: 'what if Twitter makes that same feature I'm working on?' This situation happened on a lot of other platforms before, and I guess we all knew it was going to happen here, soon or later.”