Apple will only allow native iOS gambling apps in App Store

Apple has announced that it will only allow gambling apps native to iOS to be hosted in its App Store, giving operators until September 3 to ensure their products comply.

They have made several changes in the App Store Review Guidelines, especially to the Design Section. Gaming Operators should check Section 4.7, which relates to Bots, HTML 5 Games, etc, where stands the following: 

HTML5 games distributed in apps may not provide access to real money gaming, lotteries, or charitable donations, and may not support digital commerce. This functionality is only appropriate for code that’s embedded in the binary and can be reviewed by Apple. This guideline is now enforced for new apps. Existing apps must follow this guideline by September 3, 2019. With this change, only native apps will be accepted in the App Store. apps developed especially for Apple's operating system.

These guidelines update apply to all app currently available in the App Store, in addition to any new apps that are added between now and the deadline of September 3.

Game changer, but not for Tipster

When we started working on the Tipster betting app, three years ago, we decided to take the long road and go completely native from scratch. We researched some of the top betting apps and noticed that quite a lot of them don't feel and behave native, such as blink when a user is opening a new screen, 3D touch is opening a mobile website instead of giving a preview of next screen, they mostly don't have back on swipe or native bottom dialog which is iOS standard.

You can imagine a challenge we have every day during product development. It is not only to give the user a new amazing feature, but we should also make him feel using our app in the same way as the most famous iOS apps.

Our design team is spending hours to show even the smallest change in the way Apple has it in the guidelines.

And what was the outcome of our native app? The best performance! Quick loading time, fast live score and the fastest available odds on the market as well as the best user experience for iOS users. All of it allows the customers to respond to game events in seconds and place bets immediately. This has surely highlighted us from the competition and ensured us a relaxed summer. It also allowed us to develop the latest iOS features and use their guidelines without using custom solutions.

What does it mean for developers?

Bigger sports betting and game developers will not feel this change, but for smaller ones, this is an important decision whether all of these changes are worth the hassle. One of the major issues as well is just the short time to achieve this (~3 month, which is nearly impossible for most gambling apps), not mentioning that the due date for this major change is right before NFL and pretty much all the European football events. 

Customers will still have access to these products on their own mobile devices, but may not be able to download any new updates. 

New players will also be unable to download them from the App Store.

According to Statista 2017 research on what do mobile users around the globe use their devices for, 10% smartphone users and 5% tablet users said online gambling and betting. 

Now, count how much is that from 2.32 billion. 

What is the difference between native and Hybrid apps?

Developing a native app (an app for a specific mobile platform) demands using certain programming languages and technologies. iOS apps are written in Objective-C and Swift. Inside those languages, you get special tools for built application. Native apps work with the device's OS in ways that enable them to perform faster and more flexible than alternative application types. Native apps can use the device’s notification system and can work offline. 

When it comes to web apps, they are websites that just look like native apps. Most of them are written in HTML5, as are many regular web pages, so there is no bigger difference between them. 

Hybrid apps are a combination of native and web apps. You can find them in the app store but they rely on HTML code. Hybrid apps are also popular because they allow cross-platform development and thus significantly reduce development costs: that is, the same HTML code components can be reused on different mobile operating systems. 

Although it is time-consuming to build a native app, because you have to work with different codebases for Android and iOS, and expensive, it is proven that they have better performance and make better UI and UX.

Source: https://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/