14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has recently kicked off a major cleaning process in the App Store to remove clones and spam apps, and it looks like the company is also running it at full speed in China as well.
A report from Chinese website People.cn reveals that Apple has removed no less than 58,000 apps from the Chinese App Store in only two weeks. The biggest removal rate was reached on June 15 when Cupertino pulled the plug on no less than 22,000 apps, which is 10 times more than the figure the company typically removes from the App Store for violating its guidelines.
Specifics are not available, but Apple has already been criticized for some of its most recent decisions regarding Chinese operations, with some claiming that the iPhone maker is struggling to compete against local companies whose services are skyrocketing in terms of adoption lately.
Going after Flappy Bird clones
Apple, however, has already removed hundreds of thousands of apps from the global App Store as part of a major cleanup process that involves blocking apps like spam and clones. In China alone, 33.5 percent of the removed apps were said to be games, as Apple is struggling to deal with a problem that increased substantially after the Flappy Bird saga.
A growing number of games that are published in the App Store are nothing more than clones of the famous Flappy Bird game and Apple wants to remove them, as it thinks that copycats can impact revenues of original developers.
At the same time, Apple is also going after apps that are created with templates or with online services, which essentially lead to more clones or spam apps, so it’s not surprising that such a huge number of items is being impacted by the cleaning process.
Apple’s aggressive app removal continues these days, but the company is yet to provide any information or specifics, though more details are expected to surface soon as the number of apps going dark increase.