This week has seen a new peak in the ongoing saga of rejected iPhone applications: The rejection of Google's Voice App and the removal of similar apps that had been available in the store for months has stirred up the iPhone developer community. Not that things were all happy-bunny before that, either: Bloodcurling stories of arbitrary and inconcistent app rejections abound.

We’ve had similar experiences ourselves: A client asked us to develop a promotional application that was meant to be shown off to customers and business partners. The app featured a promo video, a picture gallery with a slideshow and a browsable list of the customer’s’ offices around the globe, witch contact details that could be dialled or emailed directly.

This is essentially identical in features to currently available applications from Chanel, Les Petits or Ralph Lauren. Yet, inexplicably, Apple decided to reject our app:

"Thank you for submitting your application to the App Store. Unfortunately, your application, ****** 1.0, cannot be posted to the App Store because it contains minimal user functionality. Its sole purpose is marketing or promoting your product/service, and would not be appropriate for the App Store.

If you believe that you can add additional features that utilize iPhone functionality, we encourage you to do so and resubmit ****** 1.0 for review."

Stories such as this one are being circulated widely in blogs and over Twitter. Right now, the terms "AT&T", "Google Voice" and "Apple" are amongst the top 5 topics of the day on Twitter. This is not good news for Apple. It is said that history repeats itself: When Microsoft introduced compulsory software activation for Windows, it pushed a lot of people over the edge to eventually try something different. This is how I ended up buying my first Mac. Similarly, many iPhone developers are jumping ship.

But more importantly, it cemented the image of Microsoft as an evil empire of ignorance and greed. Apple needs to learn from the mistakes of others: Your public image is a very precious commodity, and statements such as "Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core" are not pointing in the right direction.

However, there is another serious problem here, which is of a much more practical nature: Apple earns a lot of money with iPhone applications, and chances are the growth potential is still huge. However, as every marketplace, we developers need to be able to judge both the risk and potential profit of developing an application. Random rejections, and even retrospective removal of applications, tarnishes the trust that is necessary for developers to spend serious time and money on good applications. I understand that Apple feels invincible given the current circumstances: They reported 1.5 billion downloads from the app store, orders of magnitude more than any other mobile platform. Few people would deny that Apple created a great platform and extremely powerful development tools. But now, they need to keep up with the times, or they might just loose their advantage as quickly as they gained it.

If you’ve read thus far, I suggest you also have a look at this post by fellow iPhone developer Jeff Scott and support/copy/resend his open letter to Steve Jobs to fix the app review process.

Update:
Techchrunch just ran a story on popular Mac developers ditching their iPhone, getting a Palm Pre instead. Do you hear the bells ringing, Apple?