Apple lists the top 10 reasons apps get rejected
What gets an app rejected from the iTunes app store? Apple has released a breakdown of what developers are doing wrong.
When a developer submits an app to the iTunes App Store, Apple runs it through a manual review process to make sure everything is up to scratch. This is a time of tenterhooks: Apple's standards are high, and it's not uncommon for an app to be sent back to the developer for tweaking.
But why are apps sent back? We've all heard about the occasional app that gets pulled or rejected for content, but surely that's not the case with every app that gets sent back to the drawing board.
And, as it turns out, it's not: Apple has published a post on its developer site that clearly outlines its review criteria, with a breakdown of the most common reasons that an app will get rejected.
"Before you develop your app, it's important to become familiar with the technical, content, and design criteria that we use to review all apps," Apple wrote. "We've highlighted some of the most common issues that cause apps to get rejected to help you better prepare your apps before submitting them for review."
Most of the reasons for rejection seem to be technical in nature: an app that crashes frequently or is buggy, for instance, or contains broken links, or incomplete forms. Other reasons include terrible UIs, apps that aren't considered "engaging and useful", misleading information, and trying to submit too many apps that are similar to each other.
But by far and away the highest rate of rejection at 14 percent falls under "More information needed" -- which simply means that the review submission form -- the form developers need to fill out when submitting their app for review -- is incomplete.
This is followed by bugginess at 8 percent, and non-compliance with the Developer Program License Agreement and terrible user interfaces in equal third at 6 percent. In all, the top 10 reasons for app rejections account for 58 percent of all app rejections.
Apple did not go into detail about the remaining 42 percent, nor state what percentage of apps get rejected in the first place. As of June 2014, Apple had 1.2 million apps in the iTunes app store, and had seen over 75 billion app downloads.