In an interview with Business Week, Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide product marketing explained why Apple is so vigilant about App Store. In the interview Phil outlined the many reasons Apple keeps close tabs on which applications can be downloaded onto iPhone, and he also outlined ways the company trying to become more flexible in the approval process.

“We’ve built a store for the most part that people can trust. You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you’d expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it just works,” Phil Schiller said. “Whatever your favorite retailer is, of course they care about the quality of products they offer. We review the applications to make sure they work as the customers expect them to work when they download them.”

According to Apple, 90 percent of the apps are rejected because of the technical issues, 10 percent because of inappropriate content and around 1 percent apps fall into some gray area that Apple hasn’t anticipated. An example that Phil gave for gray area app was applications intended to help user cheat at gambling in casinos. Phil said “We had to go study state and international laws about what’s legal and what isn’t, and what legal exposure that creates for Apple or the customers.” He added the verdict was: Apps that help a user learn how to play are O.K.; those designed to help a person cheat don’t make the cut.

Phil also talked about trademark issues and parental controls for the applications. He said, “We’ve had inquiries from governments and political leaders asking us what we were doing to protect children from inappropriate content.” You can read the full article on Business Week’s website.