The additional submission category comes as a surprise, following Apple's recent removal of thousands of "overtly sexual" applications from the App Store, and is widely seen as a welcome measure — if yet another example of the company's oft inconsistent flirtations with market demand.
"The reason for Apple's addition of the new category is unknown, although it seems possible that the company may have reconsidered its decision to remove the 'overtly sexual' applications in the face of backlash from developers and users and has decided to create a dedicated category in an attempt to find a middle ground in the controversy," Eric Slivka of MacRumors.com blogged. "The use of a dedicated category for explicit material could supplement the age-rating system used for all App Store applications to easily make the entire category invisible to certain users using Parental Controls."
According to Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo.com, the new category hasn't yet shown up in the App Store, but its meaning is obvious: Apple has a home for explicit applications
"We've been waiting for such a place since the App Store opened, actually getting excited when Parental Controls made their way into iPhone 3.0, hoping it would release a pent-up flood of apps like the long-lost South Park app, or Playboy for those so-inclined," Buchanan wrote. "An explicit category suggests that it could finally happen."
Industry operators, however, are not convinced that the new designation will usher in a dramatic change in policy that opens the doors to adult.
"While there's rampant speculation that Apple's new 'explicit' app category signals an impending return of adult apps to the App Store, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just yet," Pink Visual Director of Public Relations, Q Boyer, told XBIZ. "To the extent that their stated rationales for the removal of the 'overtly explicit' apps make any sense at all, that modicum of sense would be truly obliterated by a subsequent return of those same apps, or even more explicit ones, to the App Store."
"There's also nothing new about explicit ratings within the App Store, and no guarantee that anything Apple labels 'explicit' will actually be explicit as that word is defined by anybody else in the known universe," Boyer added. "Our recently booted Cutest Girls app was rated 17+ for 'explicit sexual content,' 'frequent nudity,' and 'frequent sexual themes,' and it had no nudity whatsoever."
The discussion illustrates the challenges in developing for the iPhone market.
"I don't know whether Apple is using an alternative dictionary, or just playing it loose with the definitions of common English terms, but perhaps their content policies would be clearer to developers if they picked up a copy of Webster's and called it a day," Boyer concluded.
No word from Apple yet regarding any policy changes.