Apple has posted a comprehensive document discussing its answers to the FCC’s inquiry into why it supposedly rejected an official Google Voice application for the iPhone. Entitled “Apple Answers the FCC’s Questions,” the post touches on several broad App Store issues, including standards for considering and approving iPhone applications, the approval process itself, other applications that have been rejected, and AT&T’s role in the approval of iPhone applications, as well as specifics about the Google Voice rejection. Apple denies that it has rejected the applicaiton outright, saying that it “continues to study it,” while making comparisons to the functionality it provides and the iPhone’s built-in Phone and Messaging apps, and notes that “Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple’s Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its ‘Google-branded’ user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices.”
The company also states that it is acting alone and had not consulted AT&T about the Google Voice application, and that only Apple’s agreement to block VoIP apps over AT&T’s network, AT&T’s Terms of Service, and occassional concerns from AT&T about network efficiency and potential network congestion associated with certain applications have affected its app review policy, noting that it “alone makes the final decisions to approve or not approve iPhone applications.” It goes on to list representative applications that have been rejected as originally submitted, and says that “[t]here are more than 40 full-time trained reviewers, and at least two different reviewers study each application so that the review process is applied uniformly.” Apple also says it has “established an App Store executive review board that determines procedures and sets policy for the review process, as well as reviews applications that are escalated to the board because they raise new or complex issues. The review board meets weekly and is comprised of senior management with responsibilities for the App Store.”
