GLOBAL - One of the major contributing factors to iPhone's unprecedented market success is the role played by Apple's App store, which created an ideal platform for app developers to list and sell their mobile software to iPhone users. Such has been the popularity of this store, that Apple now uses the punch line, "There is an app for that" in ad campaigns of iPhones, stressing on the fact the ubiquitous availability of apps for almost every possible aspect of iPhone's usability. The store now has more than 100,000 approved applications and Apple has reported more than 2 billion downloads from the app store. However, the app approval policies of Apple are now shooing away some of the better known developers from the store.

Facebook app developer, Joe Hewitt, was the first mainstream app developer to quit the platform over Apple's policies. Joining the list are Dutch-based app developer, Vincent Verweij and Wireless  Developer Agency's Konny Zsigo, citing lack of protection from replication of applications by part-time developers as one of the main reasons for quitting the platform.

Speaking at the iCE Conference at Amsterdam, Verweij lashed out at Apple App store policies saying "Shortly after the release of the App Store was it possible for a voice control application to sell for 10 euros.  A month later there was a competitor with a similar application for 99 cents, the month after there was a free app. You cannot compete with free." The competition from part-time developers and lack of copyright protection for apps adds on to absurd App approval policies of Apple, driving away start-up and established developers from the platform.

Whether the recent round of vindications from developers forces Apple to re-think its strategy on the App Store and App approval policies is something only time will tell.