Apple once again extends native app deadline

Technology giant Apple has once again extended the deadline by which developers must ensure their apps are fully native to iOS.

Having originally extended the deadline to 3 March in September last year, it has once again pushed it back six months, to 30 June.

This means more than a year will have passed since Apple originally ordered all gambling, lottery apps, as well as those processing charitable donations, to ensure they were built for its operating system.

Many of the apps developed for these industries have to date been ‘container apps’ in which an iOS wrapper is built around an HTML5 product. This was widely used as a quick and cost-effective way of developing mobile products.

The original deadline of 12 September, set following the original announcement, had threatened to see the majority of gambling apps disappear from Apple’s App Store.

At the time, developers pointed out it was a potentially unrealistic timescale in which to complete such a project.