Every year Apple shuts down its iTunes Connect service – the portal for developers to manage their applications in the App Store – for the holidays. This year iTunes Connect will be closed from December 21st to December 29th.

iTuness Connect Shutdown

The App Store will get a whole lot quieter with iTunes Connect being temporarily shutdown

What this means is during this time no new applications will become available, and no new app updates will be pushed. Furthermore, apparently in-app purchases will be become unavailable to purchase until after the shutdown. The App Store will essentially be in a state of silence, with only existing applications being available to download.

Apple sent the following email to developers.

iTunes Connect will be temporarily shut down from Friday, December 21, 2012 to Friday, December 28, 2012, for the winter holidays.

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Additionally, the following will be delayed:

Releases scheduled to appear on the App Store for the first time

Pricing changes scheduled through the interval pricing system in iTunes Connect

Last year iTunes Connect went down from December 22nd to December 29th.