Apple’s cracking down on apps that have no other purpose but offering emoji — that cute emoticon character set popular with some text messengers — and are kicking developer’s apps out of the App Store if they do nothing else. The reason? iOS 6 already does emoji.
Here’s the email Apple is sending developers:
We are writing to let you know your app, [redacted], has been removed from the App Store because it is no longer needed to unlock Emoji.
Since iOS 6 now provides Emoji support to all users, your app is no longer in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines
2.12 Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
If you have questions about the removal of your application, please contact App Review at [email protected]. Please include the App ID and the name of your application in your email.
Thank you and best regards,
App Review
Doesn’t seem like a huge loss to me, and it seems as if developers of such apps can still have emoji as long as their software has other functionality. What do you think?
Source: Techcrunch
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
6 responses to “Apple Cracking Down On Emoji Apps”
Not sure I like this. So just because IOS 6 now offers default emoji icons, 3rd party developers can’t offer their own? Needless to say, not all emoji icons are the same. I’m not sure why Apple wouldn’t let IOS 6 users have the choice of which emoji they want to use. I also don’t see the harm of having alternate apps available when users have to “opt in” to these 3rd party icons by downloading and installing the ap.
Seeing the emoji icons available on IOS 6, I can say that other companies do it better. At the very least you can say it’s an issue of taste.
I’m not sure what this means in the overall scheme of things and how it relates to the IOS ecosystem, but if Apple started banning any 3rd party app just because it competes with their own software, then this will make IOS a much weaker mobile OS than it could be and Apple owners will be all the poorer for it.
I think it’s great because if not rejected, lots of people would buy them without knowing anything about build in emoji’s.
I think it is great. Those kind of junk apps are a waste of space on the App Store and cheapen the entire App Store ambience.
I don’t think you understand. They don’t add Emoji, they simply enable the Emoji keyboard which has been built into iOS for a long time. Now the keyboard is there on English-speaking countries’ settings in iOS6.
You can’t make your own emoji icons. All the apps do is let you access the emoji icons that are already on every ios device.
Therefore any app is useless.
Yup. Only 700,000 of the highest quality, hand picked apps. No room for junk in there, no way!