Can we retrieve the applications currently running in iPhone and iPad

You can get a list of running processes and from process ids may be you can figure out which ones are system processes and which one are 3rd party apps, but anyway I don’t believe you can use it in application for appstore. (code taken from here)

- (NSArray *)runningProcesses {

    int mib[4] = {CTL_KERN, KERN_PROC, KERN_PROC_ALL, 0};
    size_t miblen = 4;

    size_t size;
    int st = sysctl(mib, miblen, NULL, &size, NULL, 0);

    struct kinfo_proc * process = NULL;
    struct kinfo_proc * newprocess = NULL;

    do {

        size += size / 10;
        newprocess = realloc(process, size);

        if (!newprocess){

            if (process){
                free(process);
            }

            return nil;
        }

        process = newprocess;
        st = sysctl(mib, miblen, process, &size, NULL, 0);

    } while (st == -1 && errno == ENOMEM);

    if (st == 0){

        if (size % sizeof(struct kinfo_proc) == 0){
            int nprocess = size / sizeof(struct kinfo_proc);

            if (nprocess){

                NSMutableArray * array = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];

                for (int i = nprocess - 1; i >= 0; i--){

                    NSString * processID = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%d", process[i].kp_proc.p_pid];
                    NSString * processName = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"%s", process[i].kp_proc.p_comm];

                    NSDictionary * dict = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjects:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:processID, processName, nil] 
                                                                        forKeys:[NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"ProcessID", @"ProcessName", nil]];
                    [processID release];
                    [processName release];
                    [array addObject:dict];
                    [dict release];
                }

                free(process);
                return [array autorelease];
            }
        }
    }

    return nil;
}: