French Minster Calls Removal of AppGratis from Apple’s App Store an “Extremely Brutal and Unilateral” Move


By: Ali Raza  |   April 15th, 2013   |   Apple, Business, Mobile Apps, News

Apple recently removed the discovery app, AppGratis, from its App Store over the violation of its review guidelines. After the unexpected move the CEO of AppGratis, Simon Dawalt, was the first to take on Apple as he wrote in a blog post that the decision by the technology giant was “absolutely crazy” and claimed that the situation is “far from finished” because by doing so the Cupertino-based firm is actually destroying its own ecosystem. Now regulators in France are looking to challenge Apple’s decision of expelling AppGratis from App Store, as they will ask the EU member countries and European Commission to make regulations for technology companies more stiff. The statement came from Fleur Pellerin, a Junior French Minister of Digital Economy while she was on a tour to AppGratis publisher iMediapp. Fleur said that Apple’s decision to eradicate AppGratis was “extremely brutal and unilateral”:

 

Pellerin said, “This behaviour is not worthy of a company of this size. She added that certain Internet companies were guilty of “repeated abusive behaviour” and said she would ask the European Commission and EU member states to better regulate digital platforms, search engines and social media.”

 

Apple is taking the criticism because of the broad review guidelines of its App Store that enables the company to expel any app that promotes specific App Store content and not others. Initially Apple said that it had eradicated AppGratis from the App Store because it had violated its guidelines which state that “Apps that display Apps other than your own for purchase or promotion in a manner similar to or confusing with the App Store.” In addition to this, Apple also said that AppGratis has breached its guideline 5.6 that states “apps cannot use Push Notifications to send advertising, promotions, or direct marketing of any kind.”

 

Talking to Reuters on Thursday, April 11, Apple divulged that they had discussed the issue with AppGratis before removing the discovery app, but the developers of application had “disregarded its technical specifications.” On the other hand, CEO of AppGratis wrote in his blog post after the removal of the app that Apple should make contact with him so they could discuss the problem and sort out the issue.

 

According to the sources of AllThingsD the removal of discovery app was just the first step that Apple has taken towards a big crackdown against similar kinds of apps.

 

Source: 9to5Mac

Photo: Newswhip

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