Banning pornography and other offensive materials from the iPhone App Store, Apple has tried to limit the smut available on its iPhone to what you can find on the Web.
But while apps featuring actual nudity are forbidden in iTunes, apps with images of people in their underwear are fine by Apple.
Consequently, porny apps are ubiquitous in the iTunes store.
Here's the real surprise: Not many of them are making that much money, however. That's because porny apps seldom make the best-selling list, which is dominated by games.
To succeed, they need to stay on the top 100 list for one of several porn-friendly categories, including "Lifestyle" and "Photography. "(Apple doesn't give adult apps their own category, of course). Ben Cousins, who makes adult apps as well as other apps targeted at 20-something males, says that once an app falls off those lists, "sales can be pretty dismal."
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Even holding a place on those lists doesn't necessarily prove lucrative. Ben consistently has multiple apps on the top 100 lists of several categories -- something only a handful of other adult app developers can boast -- but says, "I still work a full time day job and won't be quitting anytime soon."
One rare winner is a free app called "On the Go Girls," which claims well over 2 million downloads a month.
They could do even better if Apple's ratings and policies were more lenient, according to "On the Go Girls" developer Frederick Clarke. He argues that "iTunes sells numerous R movies with significant amounts of nudity, violence, and sexual content." Given that his apps aren't allowed to contain actual nudity, he says the 17+ ratings they garner are ridiculous, when they wouldn't "require even a PG 13 rating" in a movie.
We don't see it happening, even if Apple would be throwing away money if it kept sex out of the App Store altogether.
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In the meantime, we've gathered 15 of the most outrageous sex apps available on iTunes, from the straightforward albums of explicit photos to apps that will make you rethink just what sort of toy you're carrying in your pocket every day.
Click here to check out the most outrageous sex apps >
photo courtesy of Nick Ogawa
Update: Many of these apps are now gone from the App Store, casualties of Apple's war on porn.
Correction: An earlier version of this post said Frederick Clarke believes Apple should let even more explicit porn into its store. That is not accurate. He does think the policies should be slightly more lenient with its ratings, and that its treatment of apps and movies is inconsistent.
