Apple may be censoring adult-themed apps, according to
developers to claim their more explicit offerings have been pulled from the
company's App Store in recent days.
According
to a Feb. 18 report on TechCrunch, developer Jon Atherton received an e-mail
from Apple stating that one of his applications contained "content that we had
originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently
received numerous complains from our customers about this type of content, and
have changed our guidelines appropriately."
The purposed Apple e-mail, signed by "iPhone App Review," went
on to add: "We have decided to remove any overtly [adult] content from the App
Store, which includes your application…Thank you for your understanding in this
matter."
Throughout Feb. 19, online reports seemed to indicate that a
number of explicit apps had indeed been pulled from the App Store. While Apple
has a history of pulling apps that incite popular protest, it also is
notoriously quiet about policy changes.
In
April 2009, Apple yanked a "Baby Shaker" app, which let users "shake" a
virtual infant quiet on the iPhone, and issued an apology. A clause in the
iPhone SDK agreement states that "Applications must not contain any obscene,
pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind." The
next month, Apple also pulled "Me So Holy," an
application that attracted protests over its supposed religious
insensitivity.
Apple
has also been pulling apps for other reasons. In December, the company
yanked more than 1,000 applications by a developer, Molinker, which users accused of
posting false positive reviews for its products.
Apple's App Store has been expanding rapidly, with research
firm IDC predicting its number of apps will expand to 300,000 by the end of
2010. That growth will likely pressure Apple further to weed out developers who
attempt to flood the store with useless applications or otherwise attempt to rig
the system.
The upcoming release of Apple’s iPad tablet PC may also be
impelling a spike in third-party developers creating wares for the App Store.
According to mobile analytics company Flurry, the
number of iPhone OS application starts spiked in January 2010. Apple has
been encouraging developers to download the new iPhone SDK 3.2 beta in order to
create programs for the iPad, which Apple is predicting will launch within the
next two months with more than 140,000 applications capable of running on its
9.7-inch LED backlit multitouch display.
However, Flurry also noted that the retention curves for
aggregated iPhone and Google Android applications were nearly identical, while
IDC also predicts a massive rise in the number of developers designing programs
for Android devices. That suggests that competition between Apple and Google
within the mobile space is only beginning to heat up.
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Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
