Apple removed 1,474 apps on govt takedown requests in 2022, 14 from India

SanFrancisco, May 20

Apple removed 1,474 apps from its App Store as per requests from various governments to take down such apps in 2022, including a massive 1,435 from mainland China and just 14 from India.

According to the company's '2022 App Store Transparency Report', the Pakistan government requested to take down 10 apps while Russia asked to remove seven apps for violating various laws of the land.

There were a total of 18,412 appeals of app removals from various agencies worldwide (again led by China at 5,484), including 709 from India. Apple restored 24 apps in India after appeals of app removals last year.

As of 2022, Apple had 1,783,232 apps in total on the App Store, according to the report.

The tech giant reviewed 6,101,913 app submissions and rejected 1,679,694 last year for violating App Store policies.

App submissions approved after rejection were 253,466, and the total number of apps finally removed from the App Store was 186,195 in 2022.

It was the first report published as part of the company's $100 million settlement with App Store developers in 2021.

Category-wise, games (38,883), utilities (20,045) and business (16,997) topped the list of removed apps.

The total number of registered Apple developers on the App Store was 36,974,015, while Apple terminated 428,487 developer accounts for violating its policies in 2022.

"Since it launched in 2008, the App Store has proven to be a safe and trusted place to discover and download apps," according to Apple.

Earlier this week, Apple announced that its App Store prevented over $2.09 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions in 2022, blocking nearly 3.9 million stolen credit cards from being used to make purchases, and banned 7,14,000 accounts from transacting again.

--IANS