Apple recently launched a major cleanup process in the App Store to remove clones and spam apps, and it seems the company is running it at an equally fast pace in China.
A report from Chinese website People.cn reveals that Apple has removed at least 58,000 apps from the Chinese App Store in just two weeks. The largest removal rate was achieved on June 15, when Cupertino pulled the plug on no fewer than 22,000 apps, a rate that is 10 times higher than the size the company removes from the App Store for violating its guidelines.
Specifics are not available, but Apple has already been criticized for some of its recent decisions regarding Chinese businesses, with some claiming that the iPhone is struggling to compete with local companies whose services are skyrocketing in terms of adoption.
Apple, however, has already removed hundreds of thousands of apps from the global App Store as part of a major cleanup that includes blocking apps like spam and clones. In China alone, 33.5% of the apps removed are said to be games, as Apple struggles to address a problem that has grown substantially since the Flappy Bird saga.
A growing number of games published on the App Store are nothing more than clones of the famous game Flappy Bird, and Apple wants to remove them, as it believes that copycats can affect the revenue of the original developers.
At the same time, Apple is also moving towards apps built with templates or with online services, which essentially leads to more clones or spam apps, so it's not surprising that such a large number of items are affected by the cleanup process.
Apple's aggressive app removal continues these days, but the company has yet to provide any information or details, although more details are expected to emerge soon as the number of apps going dark increases.
