In order to be more transparent, Apple has confirmed that it will detail Why do I know some apps are removed from the App Store? at the request of the governments of different countries; something that we have been seeing for a few years and that affects, above all, territories such as China or Russia.
The company, in particular, removes apps from the App Store for various reasons. One of them, and the most common, is when an app violates the app store policy. Either for including an alternative payment method to Apple’s, as happened with Fortnite, or because they simply haven’t been updated for a long time, among other reasons.
Apple, however, also tends to remove apps on orders from governments. In China, for example, apps like WhatsApp or Signal are not allowed. These, in fact, cannot be downloaded from the App Store. The problem is that Apple does not publicly disclose when it has withdrawn an application at the request of some governments. Nor the number of apps that it deletes for this reason, something for which the company has been highly criticized, reports Financial Times.
Apple, therefore, will inform through its transparency report if a government has requested to remove one or more applications. It will also detail whether you have accepted that request and the number of applications that you have removed based on that request.. Apple, yes, will not publicly report why it has removed applications individually.
Apple has come to remove more than 30,000 apps in the Chinese App Store
One of the best examples of removing apps at the request of governments is when Apple removed up to 30,000 apps from the Chinese App Store. According to Bloomberg, most of them —around 90%— were games. These were removed due to a Chinese regulation, which spells out that developers must first get approval from Chinese regulators if they want to release a game that includes some form of payment in the country.
Those foreign developers, moreover, cannot directly request the license from the country. They have to partner with a local company to get them to apply and regulators to allow—or not—approval. In 2021, Apple also removed Bible apps in China at the request of the governmentas indicated by a report from BBCNews.