A company got in touch with Cult of Mac after our story about Apple enforcing the ban on iPad giveaways. Their apps were being held in limbo — see email above — during the iTunes approval process due to a contest they were running.
Stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, they opted to pull the iPad contest. (The giveaway had been a major way, they told us, to get the apps better known.)
All of the apps they submitted are now available in iTunes.
It’s part of a larger move by Apple to enforce its guidelines for third-party giveaways. The guidelines (.PDF here) were set out in April 2010, but Apple is only going after companies who have not adopted them correctly now.
In some cases, Apple simply discourages giveaways — you must buy 250 iPods to use them in a contest, for example.
But according to the guidelines, Apple’s hottest products are all strictly verboten when it comes to freebies:
“iPad, iPhone and the iPhone Gift Card may not be used in third-party promotions.”
Pretty clear? Not so fast.
A quick Twitter search shows there are still dozens of iPad giveaways, all of them in clear violation of the Cupertino company’s guidelines.
Didn’t they get the memo — or is there a double standard at work?
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco freelance writer who heads up Cult of Mac Magazine, our weekly publication available on iTunes. You can find her on Twitter and Google+. If you’re doing something new, cool and Apple-related, email her.
6 responses to “After Company Pulls iPad Giveaway, Apple Approves Apps [Exclusive]”
It appears the company in question did not need to eliminate their giveaway but rather disclose that “Apple is not a sponsor or involved in the activity in any manner”. Regarding the third party promotions rule, Apple is simply reserving this right to exercise at its convenience. It is similar to a business reserving the right to refuse service to any person.
Antitrust regulations say it is not the same as the simple “right to refuse service.” When your actions are done in a manner to control the commerce of another company, that is usually a violation of federal law. Apple has little chance of surviving a Justice Department suit if it makes publishing apps contingent upon the number of iPods your company buys.
It also has little (legal) ability to control what another company does with a product that it legitimately acquires. Can you imagine if Ford told a church it couldn’t auction a new taurus to raise money? If “Joe’s Apps” buys an iPod from Walmart they can do anything they want with it, as long as they don’t misuse Apple’s trademarks. but this is Apple using classic Microsoft behavior to try and exert monopoly control over a market. The US Justice Department is probably still too gutless to do anything, but we know the EU doesn’t put up with this kind of crap.
I see that this article is trying to make it sound like Apple was holding up their apps because they were running a contest on their website, but this doesn’t appear to be the case to me.
What Apple is saying is that any contest connected to the app, since there is a link, needs to have the rules clearly defined IN THE APP that also states it is not connected to Apple.
Rather than pull the contest, they could have complied with Apple’s request and gotten their apps approved. Instead, they decided to spread a conspiracy theory and pull the contest to support the theory. Good job.