Apple removes VoIP app clones from the App Store

“Following my report from yesterday, Apple has removed many of the apps I pointed out,” Romain Dillet reports for TechCrunch. “When you try to find them on the App Store, they are no longer available.”
“App Store Review Guidelines are very clear when it comes to app duplicates. According to rule 4.3, you can’t release the same app multiple times on the App Store has it is considered as spamming,” Dillet reports. “But that rule has been poorly enforced and some companies have taken advantage of that. In my original report, I focused on one category in particular — VoIP apps that let you get a second phone number and send and receive calls and texts from that new number.”
“Developers release multiple versions of the same app so that they can use different names, different keywords and different categories. This way, they can cover a wide range of keywords when you’re searching for an app in the App Store,” Dillet reports. “Companies have released clones of their apps and benefited from that strategy for many years. The main issue here is that App Store rules aren’t enforced consistently.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In the full article, you can se that VoIP apps aren’t the only type of apps employing this spammy method of gaming Apple’s App Store search results. There remain plenty of clones in other categories on Apple’s App Store.