Guideline 4.2.6. and its meaning
After Apple announced in June 2017 that Apple’s new apps will get reviewed to prevent unwanted apps from being submitted to the App Store, AppYourself is now also affected by this measure. Especially the guideline 4.2.6. which was added to section 4.2. Design > Minimum Functionality, resulted in a rejection rate for iOS submissions of 60 % over the last two weeks.
This new guideline says:
“Apps created from a commercialized template or app generation service will be rejected.”
Apple is now also against apps that have been created with an online platform such as the app builder from AppYourself. In recent months, Apple has repeatedly tightened the app review criteria. Over the past three months, Apple has just rejected 11 % of all iOS submissions. In the last weeks, the rejection has now massively increased to nearly 100 %, whereby Apple now also points out to the directive 4.2.6 that was mentioned before. The fact that Apple now completely rejects apps from our app builder, is – according to our knowledge – also a problem of all our competitors. This is totally surprising us and in no way comprehensible. Therefore, we have stopped the iOS Submission for the moment. Consequently we cannot submit your apps to Apple. Resubmissions of your iOS apps are still possible. And of course, Android apps are not affected by this. We are working on a solution and are in contact with Apple. We will of course always keep you updated and hope that we will come to a solution with Apple. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions. We are looking forward to hearing from you.
What can AppYourself do?
In the course of the ban on SME apps from the Apple App Store, we see the chance that Progressive Web Apps (PWA) will be successful in the future market. The PWA combines all the advantages of the Web (direct access and no installation from the App Store) with all the advantages of a native app. Our PWA’s already have all the native app features, such as the chat function, user profiles and the sending of push messages as well as the possibility to deepen the customer management via PWA. However, the full functionality of the PWA is currently only usable under Google’s Android system. It remains to be seen when Apple will provide PWA. According to Apple, work is being done, as Heise reports.