Apple has banned over 5,000 adult themed applications from its Apple Store, although some publishers such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated have managed to avoid the purge.

The axe fell last weekend and includes many different types of ‘sexy’ applications including games. The clearout though only amounts to just 3% of the total number of applications available from the Apple Store.

Apple’s head of Global Marketing, Philip Schiller, is reported to have told the New York Times “an increasing number of apps contain very objectionable content. It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see.”

Most of the banned applications including ‘Wobble iBoobs’ could be described as smutty rather than simply pornographic. With around one million downloads from Apple’ site, there was clearly a market for them.

Despite Apple’s determination to clean up its web site, claims of hypocrisy against the company have been made since they allowed at least two major publishing houses  which publish such material – Sports Illustrated and Playboy – to continue using the Apple Store.

Philip Schiller responded by saying that these two companies were different from the smaller banned application developers. He said: “this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format.”

How long Apple can maintain this position isn’t certain.

Image Courtesy of Apple