In brief
Apple reportedly removed approximately 58,000 problematic apps from mainland China's App Store in two weeks. Games accounted for 33.5% of the affected apps, while the number of older apps without 64-bit support remained unclear.
People.cn in mainland China recently reported that Apple had been clearing spam and copycat apps from mainland China's App Store, removing approximately 58,000 problematic apps in the region over the past two weeks—far more than in previous cleanups. In mid-June, Apple removed more than 22,000 apps from mainland China's App Store, between 6 and 10 times the usual number of removals.
According to the report, games accounted for 33.5% of the problematic apps. Given the large selection of games in the App Store, however, this proportion is unsurprising. The large-scale removal was partly a response to feedback from mainland Chinese users and developers. Mainland China's App Store was filled with copycat and spam apps, while many apps had not recorded a single download in years. This severely affected the user experience and also caused difficulties for developers.
Last October, Apple announced that it would remove problematic or abandoned apps, and nearly 50,000 apps had already been removed at that time. Removing almost 60,000 spam apps from mainland China in just two weeks is a particularly aggressive cleanup, although it remains unclear how many of these were older apps that did not support 64-bit systems.
https://unwire.hk/2017/06/26/almost-60k-spam-apps-removed-from-china-app-store/software/ios-app/