Apple withdraws skype from China's app store to comply with national law

The technology giant Microsoft has confirmed that the Skype instant messaging application has been "temporarily removed" from the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch in China, according to a statement forwarded and published by the American newspaper The New York Times.

And it is not the only one

For its part, the Apple company has confirmed to The New York Times that it has been forced to remove a series of voice and video calling applications from the App Store in China to comply with the laws of the country.

“The Ministry of Public Security has notified us that several Internet voice protocol applications do not comply with local laws. Therefore, these apps have been removed from the app store in China. These applications remain available in all other markets where they operate."

According to many Twitter users and other web pages, the truth is that the Skype application has not been available in the App Store since at least the end of last October, however, the service still seems to work normally for all those users who previously installed the application on their devices.

Skype is the latest victim of the stringent Internet filters imposed by the Chinese government, colloquially known as the "Great Firewall" or the Great Firewall. Earlier this year, Apple was forced to remove many VPN apps from the App Store in China due to these regulations, while many other apps have been affected, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Microsoft has not commented on why Skype is also not available in some of the major third-party Android app stores.