WhirlyGlobe is a lightweight 3D interactive globe component for ios apps. It's an open source toolkit that you can reuse in your own apps.
What WhirlyGlobe does is handle the 3D interaction and rendering for a globe with vector data. The vectors can be from a remote source or Shape files that you bring along with your app.
✔ Sources: http://code.google.com/p/whirlyglobe/source/checkout