Apple axes 'Hottest Girls' app

Apple has confirmed that it will not allow pornography in iPhone apps

Apple has confirmed that the 'Hottest Girls' iPhone app will not be allowed back on its iTunes App Store service.

The company issued a statement on Friday saying that the application had been removed, and that neither it nor other pornographic apps would be offered on the App Store service.

The application, which automatically sends images of women to the user's handset, made news earlier this week when it began providing users with photos featuring nudity.

When the application first went down, the developer maintained that the outage was due to a server failure and not action from Apple, leading many to speculate that the company was easing its restrictions on racy content.

On Friday, however, Apple said in a statement that Hottest Girls would not be allowed back on the App Store.

"Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography," read the statement.

"The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content."