Apple seems to be finally taking one of the most common gripes by app developer to heart.
The company’s App Store now only takes about two days to approve apps submitted for approval, down from nearly nine days a year ago, according to website AppReviewTimes.com. In January, the site, which tracks the App Store’s approval speed by looking at user-submitted data, recorded an average time of 14 days.
The site’s latest data comes from 332 user reviews it has received in the last 14 days.
Cutting down on the time it takes to approval iOS apps has some significant upsides, especially for app developers. A shorter approval cycle means they can more easily plan their app releases. It also makes it easier to fix bugs, tweak features because they can make updated versions available faster.
Mobile apps are part of Apple’s online services business, which generated about $6 billion in revenue for the company in the second quarter, up 20% from the same period a year earlier. That revenue represented 12% of Apple’s $50.6 billion in total quarterly sales. The App Store has also long been important to Apple’s ability to sell its iOS devices, which appeal to consumers based largely on the apps made for them. The more interesting, entertaining, and useful apps they can load on the devices, the more valuable they are.
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Rival Google, which has an app store for its Android operating system, takes a different approach to making apps publicly available. It often checks after they’ve been submitted and made available to users, raising complaints by some that the delay increases the risk or security problems or questionable apps sneaking in.
Apple’s acceleration of its review process comes just weeks before the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. At the conference, Apple is expected to unveiled the next version of its mobile operating system as part of its annual effort to keep developers interested in building apps for its system. Apple is also planning to start letting developers pay to have their apps more prominently displayed in the App Store, according to a recent report from Bloomberg.
Coins2Day has contacted Apple (AAPL) and will update this story if we hear more.