Over the last couple of months, Apple has come under a lot of criticism for its App Store practices. After Spotify launched the ‘Time to Play Fair’ campaign, Apple received another blow when the Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit against the company’s monopoly over the App Store to go ahead. Now, Apple has made a new page live on its website where it highlights its role in running the App Store smoothly and how it takes responsibility for everything that’s on it.

Apple says that it is the company’s responsibility to hold apps to a high standard for privacy, security, and content. It also mentions how it reviews every app and update before it goes live on the App Store.

Apple notes that its App Store review team compromises of people representing 81 languages across three time zones. Since 2016, Apple has removed 1.4 million apps because they have not been updated for a long time or they were incompatible with the latest iOS release.

The company also provided weekly app reviews numbers. On average, the team reviews around 100k apps, with most of them being approved or rejected within 24 hours of submission. Out of all the apps submitted, 60 percent are approved and available for publishing immediately by developers. The remaining 40 percent of apps are rejected due to minor bugs or privacy concerns.

From a developer viewpoint, Apple says that it provides them with a platform and flexibility. More importantly, the platform allows developers to reach over a billion customers across the world. Developers have managed to earn over $120 billion since the App Store’s inception by selling apps and games via the App Store. The company notes that it only charges developers a small commission when they sell any digital goods and services through the platform or their app.

Developers have accused Apple of forcing them to remove functionality from their apps that directly compete with new features introduced by Apple. Regarding this, Apple highlights a number of third-party apps on the App Store which compete with its own apps. For example, while iCloud is a part of iOS, a number of third-party alternatives like Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive are available on the App Store.

Apple makes a number of points over how it treats everyone fairly on the App Store and how it works hard behind the scene to deliver the best experience to everyone involved. The company does make some legit points and it might help it win some supporters but that’s not going to be enough in the court.

➤ App Store Principles and Practices