Thursday, November 5, 2009

How long does it take Apple App Store to approve an application for iPhone?

Is your application submitted to Apple still "in review" or "waiting for review"?
Personally, I don't know the difference between these two terms, however,
one of my application submitted to Apple App Store for iPhone is "in review", while the other is "waiting for review". Maybe I can assume the one "in review" is being reviewed? Unfortunately, it has been reviewed for at least a week. It really doesn't make any difference to me between "in review" and "waiting for review".

My first application 3GTest took Apple 2 weeks to find a small bug and reject it.
I fixed the bug in five minutes and waited another 1 week before Apple found another bug inside.

Finally, 5 weeks after I submitted the application and fixed two lines of code, I received a call from Apple telling me that the application is approved as if I have won a big prize.

The most recent statistics shows that 75% of submitted applications are approved within 2 weeks.
This percentage is about 82% two weeks ago, and about 95% 1 month ago.

So what the hell is wrong with Apple?
We knew that iPhone / iPod touch is really popular and there are many many applications submitted everyday. But given that these applications also help u earn so many bucks and help u sell so many phones and ipods, why can't u just hire more people to review the applications?

After weeks' waiting, I even can't remember what my application looks like.
But one good thing is that, it's quite possible, one day, walking with the help of a stick, I will receive a call from Apple telling me that "congratulations, sir, your application is approved!". I will suddenly realize that "Holyshit, I have ever created an iPhone application in objective-c, I'm so proud of myself when I was young decades ago"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've had an app in review for 2 months. It took about 6 weeks for the first rejection (because I was allowing users to download some music that was freely available, and apparently this would confuse users who would think that my app was in fact iTunes). Then I got a rejection because the Three20 library has two or three lines of code that aren't actually ever executed (they are an experimental method) that reference unpublished APIs. I'm fine with this being rejected, but plenty of applications have been accepted with the SAME EXACT LIBRARY including some of my own, which is why I wasn't previously aware of the problem. It is crazy.

Junxian Huang said...

OMG. I also used Three20 library.
I should expect my apps rejected then ...

Anonymous said...

Our latest game, Molecular, was waiting for review for about 6 days and in review for about 4 days before it was available for sale.
I believe the difference is, "waiting for review" is when your app is sitting in a queue waiting for someone to become available to begin reviewing it. When someone is available the app then enters the "in review" stage.

Hope your app is approved soon, best of luck.

Junxian Huang said...

Ya, it got approved yesterday finally after 20 days.

Your Molecular looks great!