China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce is currently reviewing a complaint from 28 local developers who allege that the iPhone maker has abused its market position in the mainland to charge excessive fees and remove apps from App Store without fair reasoning.
Chinese regulators are not actually investigating Apple at this point, CNBC reported today.
The complaint was filed to both China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the National Development and Reform Commission.
Apple allegedly levied a large cut on some apps carried on App Store in China.
For context, the company’s standard cut for App Store downloads is thirty percent and for app subscriptions 15 percent after one year of accumulated service has passed.
According to Reuters, an Apple spokeswoman underscored that guidelines for publishing apps on App Store in China were consistent across all countries.
The filing also alleges Apple removed apps from the store without proper explanation.
However, it should be noted that the technology giant is being subject to strict censorship controls in the 1.33 billion people market that have pressured it to recently remove dozens of VPN apps that could be used to evade government censorship.
In fact, Apple was required to remove those apps.
“We were required by the government to remove some of the VPN apps from App Store that don’t meet the government’s new regulations,” the Cupertino company explained.
Apple is in the process of expanding its local developer relations team in China, the report added. China’s App Store files as Apple’s most profitable store globally with more than 1.8 million people working in the App Store ecosystem in the country.