Banned App Store Developer Had Been Trying to Auction Off Business
Yesterday we reported on a MobileCrunch story about developer Khalid Shaikh, whose developer status was terminated by Apple over third-party intellectual property complaints, resulting in the removal of all of his apps from the App Store.
Context & Ripple Effects
The ban itself broke on August 5, 2009 via MobileCrunch: Apple terminated developer Khalid Shaikh's account over third-party intellectual property complaints and pulled every one of his apps from the App Store. What MacRumors adds is timing — Shaikh had been trying to auction off his App Store business before the termination landed, meaning an asset built for sale was zeroed out by a single moderation decision.
It lands during a visible enforcement stretch at Apple: the confirmed censorship of the Ninjawords dictionary app came just a day earlier, on August 4, 2009, so developers reading the week's news saw two separate accounts of the company exercising unilateral removal power.
First-order effects
- Shaikh loses his entire distribution and revenue channel at once — termination removes all his apps, not just the ones flagged in the IP complaints — and any prospective buyer of the business he was auctioning now has nothing to purchase.
Second-order effects
- Other developers whose apps depend on licensed or third-party content face sharper diligence questions when positioning their catalogs as saleable assets, since Apple has shown it will invalidate the whole portfolio on IP grounds rather than individual titles.
Third-order effects
- App Store businesses function as platform-contingent assets: their resale value rests entirely on continued standing with Apple, giving a single gatekeeper de facto control over a secondary market for developer businesses if this enforcement pattern holds.
The trend: As the App Store matures into an economy of its own, platform-enforcement decisions are becoming the decisive variable in what an independent developer's catalog is worth.