Apple Review Guidelines 4.2.6 and what it means for White Label Apps
This fortnight has been interesting for our startup App.Foundation.
We’ve received an increasing number of enquires from our competitors customers. Whilst this is great for us, and in itself not unusual, the reason for the enquiries have been very specific.
Let me explain.
We, as do competitors in our space, create White Label Apps on behalf of small to medium businesses. Its a growing industry. Everyone knows that apps are huge. Big corporates have had their own apps for years, however smaller businesses have only recently begun to catch up.
In 2012 we saw an opportunity in the market. Whilst large enterprises had large budgets to pay for app development, smaller businesses did not. We knew that smaller business would benefit equally from their own apps, but could never afford custom development.
Hair salons, restaurants, gyms, dental practices— although different industries all have the same basic business needs.
Increasing existing customer loyalty, gaining new customers, engaging customers. These issues effect all businesses, big, small, McDonalds or Johns Local Barber Shop.
We launched Sappsuma to democratize the app space. We wanted all businesses to benefit from the advanced technology available in apps. We also wanted our technology to be affordable to all.
The ONLY way to build apps at such affordable prices is to framework the product.
This DOES NOT mean that the apps are of a poor quality, or that users won’t find value in them, or they won’t be engaging with repeat use.
In fact check out the analytics below of a local bar app.

We can clearly see they’re getting thousands of app opens monthly, phone calls and referrals. The app is having a huge impact, not only for the business, but also the way customers interact with the business.
This is fairly typical of (our) framework driven apps.
Now I completely understand that Apple wish to clear up the app store. This has already been happening with the removal of older 32Bit apps. If an app is still 32Bit, and developers haven’t bothered to update it after plenty of warning, then it deserves to be removed.
Its also no longer about which platform (iOS or Android) has the most apps, its about which platform has the most engaging and useful apps. Whilst Android are pushing less engaging apps lower in the search listings, Apple seems to be rejecting, or even removing apps it feels violates its terms.
Thankfully for us we are still having our iOS (and Android) apps approved, whilst it appears our competitors are not.

Although there seems to be some ‘interpretation’ surrounding Apples updated 4.2.6 terms, we believe our apps are approved due to the fundamental technology our platform is built on.
- We build iOS apps using Objective C and Swift for iOS, we also build separate apps for Android using Java.
- We always ensure our iOS (and Android) Apps are of the highest quality possible.
- We use as much of iOS’s native functionality as possible — for example swipe left to delete, native scroll wheels to select time/dates etc. Our Android apps feature Android native functionality such as (x) to delete…We do this to ensure a familiar user experience for iOS users.
- Our iOS and Android apps DO NOT share a codebase.
- We have always handled all aspects of design, build and submission on behalf of our partners to ensure we adhere to Apples guidelines.
Many, if not all of our major competitors use a single codebase for both their iOS and Android apps. Whilst this is clearly quicker, and cheaper to initially build the platform, it means the apps lack much of the OS’s native functionality.
One clear example of this is swipe left to delete on iOS and (x) to delete on Android. Previously some of our white label partners have questioned why our apps look different on each platform, but this has always been intentional.

(Swipe left to delete)
Making the choice early on in our startup to build separate White Label Apps for Apple and Android wasn’t the easiest decision. Seeing competitors launch features quickly using alternative technologies was hard to take. Especially when some customers didn’t understand the technical differences between our platforms.
I guess the point is - if you’re going to build something, build it to the best of your ability. Eventually the quality will speak for itself.

We’re now looking forward to continuing growing our business with Apple and our White Label Partners.
Here’s to the future!