iPhone app localization by releasing separate apps for different markets

Question

I have an app on the Swedish App Store which I intend to adapt to some other markets. In this case, the most important part of the localization is to change some aspects of

Answer 1

Apple are not a big fan of this approach generally. I heard somewhere that there was an unofficial limit of three copies of the same app for localisation reasons, but I don't know how concrete that is.

Would it not be possible to build this logic into the app? You can use the NSLocale to get the device locale (not just language, also country) at runtime, and then use runtime logic to switch out view controllers, nib files etc. If your app is not well structured, you could just branch at the MainWindow.nib level if necessary, and then have complete control to change any aspect of the app when it loads.

I think this is a better approach than releasing multiple app versions for the reasons you mention, as well as avoiding hassles getting your app approved. It doesn't solve the app store notes problem, but perhaps you can work around that another way, by focussing your marketing strategy on a web site or something external to the app store.

Answer 2

• It is not possible to publish 2 apps with same name in the app store
• Risk of Ban
• App Store supports fewer languages than iOS Localization
• iOS Localization is faster than creating multiple copies
• Maintaining multiple copies, changes and updating all of them is a huge overhead
• Less favourable for achieving good ranking on App Store
• Risk of rejection

App Store Review Guidelines, one of them is that

developers should not "spam" the app store with multiple versions of the same app with minor changes.