French Minister Slags Apple Over AppGratis Ouster
The French government is taking exception to Apple’s ouster of AppGratis from the iTunes App Store.
In remarks to the media Thursday, Fleur Pellerin, France’s junior minister for digital economy, decried Apple’s move as “extremely brutal” and called on the company to “behave ethically” in its treatment of the French startup and others like it.
“This isn’t virtuous and dignified behavior for a company of that scale,” Pellerin said, adding that Apple’s removal of AppGratis should make European regulators “think about legislation.”
“The French are the world’s second-largest developers of software applications for mobile devices behind the United States,” Pellerin said. “What is the sense of investing if, overnight, your business model is jeopardized by a unilateral decision. … This is an issue of fairness.”
Apple, which rejected AppGratis from the App Store last week for violating two of its developer guidelines, declined to comment specifically on Pellerin’s remarks. But as I noted here earlier this week, the company feels it was justified in removing the app.
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