Recently, the Cupertino giant Apple has allegedly begun removing the applications from the Iranian developers and startups from the iOS App Store.
Apple Removing Iranian iOS Apps From The App Store
Based on various reports that are running in the last hours that the tech giant Apple recently has begun to remove applications originating in Iran from its official store, the App Store.
In fact, already it learned that the signing of the bitten Apple has withdrawn the application Digikala, which is actually the largest e-commerce service in Iran. However, still, there has been no official statement from the company about it, although initially there is speculation that these actions are being carried out mainly due to the laws of international trade.
It is worth mentioning that the tech giant Apple began opening the App Store users in Iran in September 2016, thereby raising and gradually the limitations previously in this regard. Although there is still no official App Store in the country, developers in the region have often been recording their developments to the platform of the Apple as if they were from other countries, especially to avoid that limitation.
The commentary Digikala uses the payment system Shaparak, which is isolated from the international system and therefore does not contradict the terms and conditions of Apple for developers in the area, however, as we said, recently it has been removed due to a new usage policy.
Moreover, many Iranian banks have applications for iOS that are loaded into the device in order to avoid violating the terms and conditions. But as Apple is starting to stop requests for applications coming from Iran, the company itself has begun to submit the following message to developers when they try to upload their applications on the official store:-
“Unfortunately, there is no App Store available for the territory of Iran. Additionally, apps facilitating transactions for businesses or entities based in Iran may not comply with the Iranian Transactions Sanctions Regulations (31CFR Part 560) when hosted on the App Store. For these reasons, we are unable to accept your application at this time. We encourage you to resubmit your application once international trade laws are revised to allow this functionality.”
So, for now, the details of the process of eliminating Apple applications from Iran are not entirely clear, it is not known if all the applications of Iranian companies and developers are being eliminated or only those that require transactions.
But this is not the first time it happens with the App Store, as it has been a point of contention in several countries, such as China, where the company last month had to remove the application of the New York Times at the request of Asian government.
