China is the biggest smartphone market in the world bar none. However, it is also one of the most aggressively competitive marketplaces where even the likes of Apple are marginally small players. But Apple cannot afford to overlook the market, even if it means low hardware sales for the company. That’s because Apple rakes in huge cash through its App Store sales each year from China. The Cupertino giant, however, has to keep a tight vigil on its online marketplace as China also happens to be the place where a lot of security is needed when it comes to these online app stores. Fresh information is that Apple has removed as many as 700 applications from the store earlier this week.
As regards to why these apps were removed, it is said that they were in violation of Apple’s rules regarding app updates. According to laid out guidelines, any updates have to go through an iOS App Store so Apple can verify the integrity and safety of the new versions being rolled out to the public. It appears as these apps have violated that condition as they must have rolled out updates without getting it passed through the App Store. Now, this isn’t anything new in China but Apple wants to curb the habit and thus the big purge wiped out 700+ apps from the huge online marketplace.
None of these excluded apps belonged to a single category. In fact, some of these apps were also big and popular like the ones owned by search giant Sogou and e-commerce platform Pinduoduo. The current development happens after Apple ran a massive clean-up program a few months ago to take action illegal gambling platforms on its App Store.
(Via)
