Should Apple Be Arbiter of Taste for iPhone Apps?
SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — Yeah, they have an app for that. But should they? That’s a question beginning to seriously plague iTunes, which offers more than 35,000 mobile games, utilities and entertainment applications from third-party publishers that generate $1 million in average daily revenue for Apple. Rob Sheridan REZNOR: The Nine Inch Nails rocker was angered that the band’s app, which had been live for weeks, was re-evaluated by Apple and pulled due to what the marketer called ‘objectionable content.’ As the company moves from marketing to its once-niche following — many experts have suggested Apple customers were for many years a cult — to selling to the ever-broadening sweep of iPhone, iPod and iTouch users, it finds itself wrestling with some of the same issues that confront other truly “mass” marketers, such as whether it needs to be an arbiter, or some might say censor, of what content it makes available. Should it refuse to carry certain apps that might offend as does,
