Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has launched a harsh accusation against Apple for adopting an opaque policy in everything related to the update control and review process, not only in regard to this as a necessary requirement for an application to reach the App Store, but also in the arrival of future updates for said applications.
These criticisms have an important reason, and that is that, according to Durov, Apple has been blocking a “revolutionary” update which will be a significant improvement to Telegram. In his opinion, the company with the bitten apple withholds and prevents the release of its updates on a “routine” basis, and accuses Apple of imposing a technological monopoly with this type of action.
“For example, our next update, which is poised to revolutionize the way people express themselves in messages, has been stuck in Apple’s “review” for two weeks, with no explanation or comment from Apple. If Telegram, one of the top 10 most popular apps globally, is getting this treatment, one can only imagine the difficulties smaller app developers are experiencing. It’s not just demoralizing: it causes direct financial loss to hundreds of thousands of mobile apps around the world.”
His words are forceful, and of course they do not leave anything good to Apple, but this is not new, that is, it is not the first time that the apple company is criticized for the policies and restrictions it applies to the App Store. On this subject, Apple commented at the time that it has about 500 experts fully dedicated to reviewing applications and updates around the world, and that each week they review about 100,000 applications. It also indicated that around 1 million requests to enter the App Store are rejected.
However, this particular case is especially controversial because Telegram competes with Apple’s iMessage service. It goes without saying that delaying a key update of a rival service without justification can constitute an assumption of unfair competition, although it would not be of sufficient importance to put Apple in legal trouble, since in the end there are also other alternatives that create a scenario of free difficult competition to control, such as WhatsApp and Signal.
Unfortunately, we are left with the doubt of knowing exactly what this revolutionary update that Durov cites consists of, although it shouldn’t take long to find out, as long as Apple hustles a little with the process of reviewing and accepting the update.
