Responding to complaints, Apple is moving to eradicate risqué iPhone applications from its iPhone store.
Apple has recently started purging sexually suggestive applications from the iPhone store. Apple has been fielding a number of complaints about app content, said worldwide product marketing head Philip W. Schiller, and the company is simply nipping the problem in the bud.
“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Schiller said.
Apple’s approach seems to be to clean up its store content so as to not scare off potential customers. The popularity of Apple products among the youth have made it leery of hosting applications that could turn off parents, and having a “Most Downloaded” page full of titles like SlideHer and Sexy Scratch Off is hardly likely to endear the company to customers concerned about their children’s technology use.
“At the end of the day, Apple has a brand to maintain,” Piper Jaffray Analyst Gene Munster said. “And the bottom line is they want that image to be squeaky clean.”
Ironically, a few well-known apps have escaped the purge, among them the Sports Illustrated and Playboy apps. How have those survived? “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller said.
Apple seems serious about this, so unless you want to limit your nearly naked women images to mainstream providers, the iPhone is not the platform for you.
Source: Nielsen Wire via Euro Gamer
Published: Feb 23, 2010 08:00 pm