Apple’s Answer Regarding Rejection of Google Voice App did not Satisfy FCC

Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice app and the other similar third-party apps was highly criticized by not only iPhone developers, but by almost every iPhone market analysts, users, journalists as well as bloggers. Even though Apple’s application rejection is not very new to people, this particular incidence has indeed drawn immense attention and criticism from every part of the world. This issue was so far dragged that the FCC got involved in it and started questioning Apple for their actions.

However, the officials at Apple did not turn down FCC - they answered all their questions and made it clear why they rejected Google Voice app from appearing in the App Store. According to the company, the application has not been approved because, when submitted for review, the app appeared to alter the distinctive user experience of the iPhone by replacing its core mobile telephone functionalities and Apple’s original user interface with the app’s own user interface for different actions such as making telephone calls, voice mailing and text messaging.

Apple had put a lot of effort in developing its distinct and innovative way of seamlessly delivering the core functionalities of the device. But, the Google Voice app replaces the Visual Voicemail of Apple by routing all calls through a different Google Voice telephone number, which supports storage of any voicemail preventing them from being stored in the iPhone itself. Just in the exact manner, the app replaces Apple’s SMS text messaging features with the Google hub for managing text messages. Moreover, enabling Google Voice app would automatically transfer entire Contact’s database of the user to Google’s server. Apple has stated that since the company has not yet received assurance from Google about the data being used in an appropriate manner or the other issues, it cannot fully agree on approving the Google Voice app.

Even though the reason Apple showed might seem genuine, the answer did not fully convinced FCC. However, by taking this action Apple has clearly indicated that iPhone developer should not build any application that might try to replace existing core functions of the device. So, from now on every single iPhone app developer should be a little careful and make sure that his application is absolutely unique and does not try to replace or imitate any of the core functionalities of the iPhone.