Apple's App Store transparency report: Which apps have been censored and where
Apple has presented figures on where most apps had to be removed from the App Store. The transparency report contains further interesting information.
(Image: tre / Mac & i)
After providing information on App Store fraud attempts and countermeasures last week, Apple has now published a full transparency report for the year 2024. The "App Store Transparency Report" is published annually and is now in its third year. Among other things, it contains information on how often and from which countries Apple received censorship requests.
Three successful removal requests from Switzerland
The most frequent "government takedown requests", i.e. successful requests from countries to delete apps, in 2024 came from the People's Republic of China (1307 in total), Russia (171), South Korea (79) and Ukraine (55). The only European country on the list was Switzerland, with a total of three apps that had to be removed. In China, it should be noted that 1131 programs were removed due to a lack of gaming licenses, which are mandatory in the country.
In the last transparency report for 2023, China still had 1285 successful removals (1067 games), followed by South Korea (103 – 102 of which were games with the wrong age rating), India (30) and Russia (12). In 2023, Lithuania (5 apps) and Hungary (one app) were two European countries on the list, while Ukraine had 5 removals.
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Further data from the transparency report
Apple reviewed a total of 7.7 million apps in 2024, of which 1.9 million were rejected. The total number of apps in the App Store in 2024 was 1.9 million. 295,109 apps were approved after an initial rejection following a review. 82,509 apps were deleted from the App Store in total. Most of these were "utilities", followed by games and the lifestyle, business and entertainment sectors. Most of the removals were for design reasons, followed by fraud and copyright infringements, spam and violations of export control regulations.
The App Store was active in a total of 175 countries and regions in 2024. Apple only restored 78 apps in China after deletion, 71 in the USA, followed by India (19), the UK (16) and Turkey (also 16). 128 million problematic accounts were deleted by Apple in 2024. The number of automatic app updates per week is a staggering 66 billion, while app updates are initiated manually 638 million times. According to Apple, the app store ecosystem in the USA generated a total of 406 billion US dollars in revenue in 2024.
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