Apple accused of locking out rival services from App Store

There has been plenty of controversy surrounding Apple's App Store of late, the firm being accused of naked greed over new policies that require developers to hand over a 30 per cent cut of profits from digital content delivered via apps.

Now it seems that the company is also blocking applications that might offer competition for Apple's own products and services.

Hosting firm Strato, which launched a free version of its HiDrive cloud storage service on Thursday, told journalists that it has had an iPhone app to provide smartphone access for some time, but that Apple has so far refused to allow it onto the App Store.

"We expected to release the app at CeBit, but it still hasn't been certified by Apple," said chief executive Damian Schmidt.

When asked why, Schmidt said that Apple has "areas where they want to do things, and they don't want us doing the same thing", in an apparent reference to Apple's own iCloud service.

Schmidt claimed that Strato is in a difficult situation with respect to Apple's policies, as the HiDrive App is a free download, but customers pay a monthly subscription for the cloud storage service itself.

In other words, Strato may have unwittingly fallen foul of Apple's new rules regarding digital content because of this.

Schmidt explained that Strato is still negotiating with Apple over making the app available, but that it is not prepared to pay the Apple tax.

"We can't afford to give Apple 30 per cent of our revenue," he said.