- May 19, 2023
- Posted by: AliensFaith
- Category: OBJECTIVE PRESS
Apple today published an inaugural App Store Transparency Report, something that the company agreed to provide to developers as part of a 2021 lawsuit settlement. Under the terms of the settlement, Apple promised to provide developers with meaningful statistics about the app review process, including the number of apps that were rejected, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, the number of apps removed from the App Store, data regarding search queries and results, and more.
All of the information that developers requested is in the 2022 App Store Transparency Report and the supplemental data that accompanies it, with the report available for download from Apple’s legal site.
In 2022, there were 1,783,232 apps on the App Store, with 6,101,913 total app submissions received and 1,679,694 apps rejected for various reasons like safety, performance, design, and legal. Apple provides numbers on the specific App Store guidelines that were violated by rejected apps, with the highest number of single rule rejections (149,378) due to violations of the Design 4.0 rule and the DPLA 3.2 Fraud rule (32,009).
A total of 253,466 app submissions were approved after rejection when developers worked with Apple to resolve issues, and 186,195 apps were removed from the App Store for breaking the App Store rules. The majority of apps removed from the App Store were games, followed by Utilities, Business, and Education.
Apple outlines the total number of apps removed from the App Store due to government takedowns, and China is at the top of the list. The Chinese government asked Apple to remove 1,435 apps, but 1,276 of those apps were games that were removed for not having the GRN license that China requires.
Apple removed 14 apps at the request of India’s government, 10 apps for Pakistan, and seven apps for Russia. In other countries including Türkiye, Bulgaria, Cypress, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, and Nigeria, fewer than two apps were removed at the government’s request.
Developers appealed 18,412 app removals in total, and Apple restored just 616 developer accounts. Apple says that apps that are appealed were typically pulled from the App Store for fraud or illegality, which is why the rejected appeal number is so high.
This article, “Apple Publishes First-Ever App Store Transparency Report” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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