As Apple published its App Store transparency report for 2022, it revealed that the company rejected 1.6 million submissions for failing to comply with Apple's performance guidelines and legal grounds. These submissions not only consist of new releases but also include updates to existing applications.
Rejecting 1.6 Million App Store Submissions
Apple released the 2022 App Store Transparency Report as part of the settlement with a group of developers two years ago and after an agreement with Apple shareholders in January. According to a report from PCMag, over 6,101,913 submissions were reviewed last year but some of them did not proceed to their release.
1,679,694 App Store submissions were rejected by Apple, with 92,598 for safety guidelines, 1,018,415 for performance guidelines, 152,391 for business guidelines, 212,464 for design guidelines, 441,972 for legal grounds, and 79,736 for other reasons.
The report described that Apple fielded 1,474 takedown requests, with 1,435 of those originating from China. India, on the other hand, came a distant second with only 14 take-down requests. This was followed by Pakistan with 10, Russia with 7, Turkiye with 2, and 1 each for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, and Nigeria.
App Removals
Additionally, The Verge reported that Apple also removed 186,195 applications from the App Store last year, affecting almost all of its categories. This includes games (38,883), utilities (20,045), business (16,997), education (16,509), lifestyle (15,171), entertainment (11,757), food & drink (8317), productivity (7314), travel (5510), and shopping (5376).
In regards to the app removals, Apple stated, "Apps are removed only from storefronts in which the entity demanding removal has jurisdiction, and they remain available in all other storefronts." Meanwhile, a total of 428,487 developer accounts were terminated for fraud and export control, violating the DPLA provisions.
The company has been known for having statistics and criteria for rejecting and removing applications from the App Store due to government takedown demands. As of 2022, the company revealed that there are 1,783,232 apps on the store and 36,974,015 registered developers.
Disclosing Transparency Report
9To5Mac reported that Apple released the transparency report as part of its settlement with a group of developers in 2021. The company promised that the reports from the company would be released on an annual basis, which will be interesting to see how things will change when the 2023 report comes next year.
The company stated during that time, these reports would share meaningful statistics about the review process of every application, "including the number of apps rejected for different reasons, the number of customer and developer accounts deactivated, objective data regarding search queries and results, and the number of apps removed from the App Store."
Aside from this, Apple announced that it blocked the $2.09 billion in fraudulent transactions on the App Store last year. More data might be shared soon regarding this issue at the Worldwide Developers Conference that will kick off on June 5th. Visit Apple's website here to access the full details of the transparency report, including an in-depth supplemental CSV file.
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