Renowned tech giant Apple has reportedly confirmed removing illegal applications from its App Store in China. Sources reported that the company has removed around 25,000 applications from the platform which accounts for nearly 1.4 percent of the total number of apps in the Chinese Appstore.
A weekend report by China’s leading state broadcaster CCTV claims that Apple’s decision to remove illegal apps was explicitly intended to wipe out applications that sold lottery tickets and extended illegal gambling services to the region.
According to Bloomberg, the issue comes along the heels of several government-controlled media including CCTV accusing Apple of hosting an array of gambling apps, which have reportedly resulted in huge losses for hoodwinked users. CCTV further stated that the tech giant recently pulled approximately 4,000 apps with the keyword “gambling”.
The Global Times, another Chinese state media claimed that Apple had already gotten rid of over 2,000 gambling apps and over 500 apps containing the keyword “lottery”.
For the record, China poses a lot of risk for the tech giant amidst the backdrop of being the largest market after the U.S. and the primary production base of its iPhones and iPads. Apple’s industry position has already been attacked by domestic players such as Xiaomi Corp and Huawei Technologies Co, which offer a range of locally oriented services.
The American tech conglomerate has unfortunately come under the radar at a time when trade tensions have intensified between China and the U.S. As per industry experts, the trade dispute between the nations has a good chance of influencing Chinese consumers to boycott American companies.
In a similar scenario back in 2017, Apple removed several VPN services from the Chinese App store. The services were reported to have not matched Beijing’s regulations and bypassed the internet censors.