CHERRY ARTICLE: Apple Removes 5,000 Bikini Apps – Response from the industry leader for mobile erotic entertainment

Wednesday, 21 April 2010 11:25 Last Updated on Tuesday, 07 February 2012 16:25 Written by Cherry Media 0 Comments

Isn’t it ironic that in its avoidance to have anything to do with adult entertainment, Apple has had its name associated with Porn more times in the last few months than many adult companies out there!

Cherry has been following the app market closely and even got as far as developing a soft glamour app around the idea of ‘creating’ your own ideal girl (looks, style, job, etc) for the App Store. It was never released, because just as we were testing, the news broke that Apple had removed over 5,000 ‘sexy’ apps from its store and were refusing to accept any new ones. (READ OUR RESPONSE HERE)

In April, ol’ Stevo was back in the trade news with his controversial view point once more. “If you want porn, buy an android phone” he said at the unveiling of iPhone’s new OS on April 4.

He went on to say “You know, there’s a porn store for Android. Anyone can download them. You can, your kids can. That’s just not a place we want to go”.

Now, for all their fabulous marketing, sublime products and revolutionary thinking that completely changed our entire industry landscape in less than 12 months, how can a man with such vision be so short sighted with something as simple as this?

Has he never heard of “Mobile Access Controls”, one of the most successful and revolutionary concepts of our time when it comes to adult entertainment? And more worryingly, is he a little confused about what porn actually is? What he so casually refers to as ‘porn’ was in fact nothing more explicit than a mid-shelf magazine or the underwear section of a clothes catalogue. Something is amiss!

Now if Steve and Apple had focused on the fact that too many ‘crap apps’ were making their way onto the store, overcrowding the great apps, and how they were keen to maintain their fabulous brand identity with rich, immersive, new-age mobile interaction for sexy apps, I’d be 100% behind them. But maybe he didn’t focus on this, because it’s actually Apple employees who approve every app that’s uploaded.

So really, it’s Apple that are solely responsible for creating the situation in the first place. Because they didn’t have proper internal guidelines as to what would constitute as a great, glamour app for a universal market place, they had to give a reason for instantly removing more than 5,000 apps with no warning, effectively causing HUGE commercial implications for many developers.

Methinks they didn’t focus the same marketing thought process on how to explain their actions as they did to ‘accidently’ leaving an iPhone 4G in a bar this week, which created extensive industry hype within hours (great idea). Nope, they decided to cite moral responsibility as the reason. Did they just simply panic and think of the first ridiculous reason that came into their heads and then couldn’t back down?

I have remained loyal to 3 simple strategies for Cherry since we launched in 2003
1) Erotic doesn’t have to mean explicit
2) Adult consumers don’t want brands
3) Services should be targeted to the user’s natural behavioural patterns for that particular devise for commercial and innovative success.

The great thing about these strategies is that you can create totally compelling, immersive services and products for a mainstream market and for any grading restrictions. If these 3 strategies are properly implemented (something we specialise in at Cherry), you can liken them to the approach used for the first Shrek movie. If you watch it as a kid, you see comedy and fairytales. If you watch as an adult, you can clearly see a second level of subtle innuendos cleverly interwoven creating a much more ‘adult’ storyline. Very well done one of the reasons why Shrek appealed so much to kids and adults alike.

Using moral responsibility as the reason is just pure bull. This excuse combined with Apple’s actions over sexy apps feels like they are creating a dictatorship society where their consumers have no freedom of choice. They are not idiots that need to be nurse-maided like that. Access controls have proved with huge success that yes, we must protect minors (although dear me, many of today’s pop-videos are more mind damaging for a child than some boobs wobbling under a bikini top on your phone), we have the means to protect them, but let consenting adults choose for themselves!

Originally Published April 21st 2010