Google Voice-based GV Mobile tries again for App Store acceptance

Days after Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced plans to ease restrictions on the creation of iOS-based mobile applications, concurrently publishing its App Store Review Guidelines to further enlighten developers on the ins and outs of writing successful iPhone software, programmer Sean Kovacs has re-submitted his GV Mobile app, a controversial Google Voice-based effort that Apple removed from the storefront more than a year ago. Kovacs confirms the application (now branded as GV Mobile +) is once again under the App Store microscope--on his blog, Kovacs says he anticipates Apple will approve the submission within the next two weeks. GV Mobile + will be priced at $2.99, with a free version available to consumers who downloaded the app prior to Apple removing it--the new edition adds enhanced messaging tools, improved graphics and other changes, with push and alternate dialing planned for future upgrades.

Apple unceremoniously dumped GV Mobile and another Google Voice-based app, VoiceCentral, in mid-2009, at the same time rejecting Google's own VoIP client for the iPhone. Weeks later, Apple found itself the target of a Federal Communications Commission inquiry, later telling the FCC it had not officially rejected Google Voice (an Internet-based service offering users free domestic calling and inexpensive long-distance calls alongside related voice and messaging tools) and "continues to study it."

According to Apple, Google Voice and GV Mobile were rejected or not included in the App Store because they interfere with the iPhone's "distinctive user experience"--Apple contended that Google Voice "appears to [replace] the iPhone's core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail." Added Apple, "Google is of course free to provide Google Voice on the iPhone as a web application through Apple's Safari browser, just as they do for desktop PCs, or to provide its ‘Google-branded' user experience on other phones, including Android-based phones, and let consumers make their choices." (A Google Voice web app for iPhone did indeed surface in January 2010.)

Apple's App Store Review Guidelines offer significant new insight into iOS software subjects like user interface design, functionality, content and technology restrictions. Among the offenses likely to result in an application's rejection, Apple cites apps that create alternate desktop/home screen environments or simulate multi-app widget experiences; apps that alter the functions of standard switches (e.g., Volume Up/Down and Ring/Silent switches); and submissions that duplicate apps already for sale in the App Store, particularly if there are many of them. The App Store Review Guidelines also address the inherent subjectivity of the approval process: "We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line," Apple states. "What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, 'I'll know it when I see it.' And we think that you will also know it when you cross it."

For more on the GV Mobile + re-submission:
- read this blog entry 

Related articles:
Google Voice for iPhone finally released--as a web app
FCC investigating Apple's Google Voice app rejection
A history of rejected iPhone apps