Chinese Media Pressure Apple to Remove 25,000 Illegal Apps

Apple has removed 25,000 illegal apps from its Chinese store, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal citing state broadcaster CCTV.

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“Gambling apps are illegal and not allowed on the App Store in China,” Apple told CNBC in a statement. “We have already removed many apps and developers for trying to distribute illegal gambling apps on our App Store, and we are vigilant in our efforts to find these and stop them from being on the App Store.”

CCTV confirmed that Apple had recently removed more than 2,000 apps related to gambling and more than 500 apps with the keyword “lottery.” Apple came under fire from Chinese state media for allegedly allowing illegal content on its platform.

“Apple itself has set up the rules on how to allow apps onto its store, but it didn’t follow that, resulting in the proliferation of bogus lottery apps and gambling apps,” CCTV said.

Apple offers more than 1.8 million apps in China, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The 25,000 apps that were removed are about 1.4% of the total contents of the App Store in China.

Last year, Apple removed many virtual private network (VPN) services from the Chinese App Store for not meeting Beijing's “new regulations.” The VPNs are used to bypass China's “Great Firewall” which restricts internet access to foreign sites.