Apple ramping up App Store cleaning efforts, has already removed ‘hundreds of thousands’ of apps

Apple has made it clear recently that it is doing a lot to improve the overall quality of the App Store and a new report from TechCrunch dives deeper into Apple’s efforts. The report explains that Apple this year is putting a heavy focus on clone and spam applications…

The App Store Review guidelines state that “apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected,” and this is apparently an area where Apple is putting its foot down this year. The mention of template apps is especially notable as they have become increasingly common on the App Store. For instance, there are thousands of “Flappy Bird” clones on the App Store that were all built from 1-click templates.

Today’s report explains that problem goes much deeper than Flappy Bird clones, though. There are music streaming applications that siphon pirated content and make it almost impossible to track them down, thus allowing for a quick influx of revenue before being removed.

There are hundreds of copies of music-streaming apps that shill pirated content to make it harder to track them down one by one and allow for single-shot bursts of revenue capture before they’re found out or retired

All in all, Apple’s recent clean-up efforts have removed “hundreds of thousands” of applications from the App Store. This includes things such as clones, spam, apps that haven’t been downloaded in “years,” and apps that are not 64-bit compatible.

It’s my understanding that this cleanup has resulted in hundreds of thousands (yes, multiple hundreds of thousands) of apps being removed from the store over the past year. That includes clones, but also things like apps that aren’t 64-bit compatible, apps that are unused (haven’t been downloaded in years) and other scammy boat trash.

Apple first announced its plans to remove “problematic and abandoned apps” back in October, removing almost 50,000 applications. This year, the company continues to ramp up its App Store clean up efforts and looks to put a specific focus on clone and spam applications ahead of the all-new App Store design going public later this year.

Apple’s full App Store Review guidelines can be found here.