iTether has been pulled from the App Store by Apple just hours after becoming the top-grossing app on the App Store. iTether ($14.99) allowed users to share their iPhone’s internet connection with their Mac or PC over USB.
iTether
Basically, with iTether, users could bypass the $20/month service offered by cellular providers. But was that the reason for the app being pulled? Full statement from Tether after the jump:
Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however they offered us no way to remedy the solution… We were very clear when listing the app what the primary function was and they even followed up with several questions and requested a video demo then they approved the application.
We strongly disagree that it burdens a carrier’s network, as from our own data history on more than 500,000 users we know the average user consumes less than 200 MBs of data per month on Tether. In comparison, one TV show streamed from Netflix, an approved Apple App, could easily be in the 300-400 MBs range. Sure, there are some users that will consume way more than the average however that’s the case with any of these types of products.
Our team is very disappointed in Apple’s decision; as we strongly believe we help carriers better monetize their data stream by pushing customers into new data tiers further increasing their bottom-line. It is very anti-competitive to not allow any Tethering application to enter into this space to innovate. Our team has created a lot of innovative solutions for the BlackBerry product, which we were hoping to port over to the iPhone like end-to-end encryption, compression, website filtering and port filtering.
Apple has yet release any official statement regarding the removal of iTether; DO YOU think Apple is in the right? Or is Tether getting screwed over?
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