Phil Schiller, Apple’s SVP of Worldwide Product Marketing, is back on his one-man crusade to defend the App Store from the latest wave of criticism pointed in its direction.

This time, Apple is having to battle the news of Facebook’s all-star developer Joe Hewitt quitting the platform, more high profile app rejections, and the rise of Android as an increasingly viable alternative to the iPhone. Schiller has granted BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl what the publication says is his first “wide-ranging interview on the matter”. Unfortunately, Schiller doesn’t really say anything to quell the growing unrest in the developer community — instead, he’s offered some finely-tuned PR-speak that will placate the vast majority of iPhone users, who are only vaguely aware of the App Store controversies and just need a reminder that Apple is still one of the good guys. But it may only make developers angrier.

Keep in mind, 100,000 approved apps doesn’t mean 100,000 GOOD apps, but according to the App Shopper, a major milestone has been hit. There are a few technicalities though.

App developers have been struggling for a while now, and Apple’s abusive nature has become pretty well known when it comes to the App store. Apple is making what looks to be an essentially hollow attempt to help developers get through their approval process and get published.

It’s not even a story any more that Apple loves to reject Apps from the App Store. Today’s entry in the Big Book of App Rejections is µMonitor, an App that monitors µTorrent that you have running on your PC. Apple rejected it because “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights.”

Apple has been working overtime recently to right some of the App Store wrongs, led by none other than Senior VP Phil Schiller. And having exposed some App Store approval process secrets in its letter to the FCC, everything should be all hunky dory in the App Store now, right? Wrong.

It’s hard to remember an app in recent memory that has been anticipated more than Facebook’s new 3.0 version of its iPhone app. How do I know? You should see my Facebook inbox from people who have hunted me down knowing that I have it since I reviewed it. Unfortunately, I can’t give it to anyone because it’s a version tied specifically to my iPhone (so stop emailing!). It’s been a week and a half since Facebook engineer Joe Hewitt submitted the app to the App Store, and the wait time frustration is not only getting to the users, but to Hewitt himself, as he made clear in a blog post tonight.

Simply put, Hewitt’s post is a must-read because he makes a range of excellent points in a fairly condensed space. We’ll simply highlight some of the larger ones.

Apple has responded to our request for a follow-up on AT&T’s statement to the FCC. Of note, Apple is saying that it hasn’t actually rejected the Google Voice app, but that it didn’t accept the version submitted because it was too similar to the iPhone’s functionality. Here’s the key blurb:

Contrary to published reports, Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application, and continues to study it. The application has not been approved because, as submitted for review, it appears to alter the iPhone’s distinctive user experience by replacing the iPhone’s core mobile telephone functionality and Apple user interface with its own user interface for telephone calls, text messaging and voicemail.

Here’s the full statement, warning, this is long.

Today Apple filed with the FCC the following answers to their questions.

Now that all of the letters to the FCC have been filed by Apple, AT&T and Google, we’re more carefully reading them over for interesting details. The Apple letter would seem to have the most interesting information, as it controls the App Store, and has given some new information about it. Here are some interesting tidbits.

On general app rejections:

We created an approval process that reviews every application submitted to Apple for the App Store in order to protect consumer privacy, safeguard children from inappropriate content, and avoid applications that degrade the core experience of the iPhone. Some types of content such as pornography are rejected outright from the App Store, while others such as graphic combat scenes in action games may be approved but with an appropriate age rating. Most rejections are based on bugs found in the applications. When there is an issue, we try to provide the developer with helpful feedback so they can modify the application in order for us to approve it.

There are more than 10,000 games on the App Store, according to Apptism. That’s 20% of all apps released on the store: how the hell do you decide which one to buy? We can’t help you there, but we can keep serving you up reviews of recently released games so you can decide for yourself. We spent the week fumbling around with 5 of them: Tradewinds 2, Castle Of Magic, Archon, Jungle Bloxx, and Pocket Gold. Read on for our impressions

When Nokia launched its Ovi Store for mobile applications a month ago, it was clear that – despite its less than stellar launch – it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the Finnish mobile juggernaut’s efforts as meaningless. The company may be struggling to stay relevant on the software and services side, but with a reach like Nokia’s on the handset distribution level I think it goes without saying that a lot of eyes are firmly fixed on Nokia’s initiatives in the field.

The drama in iPhone porn world continues. Yesterday, Hottest Girls, the first app with nudity was accepted into the App Store. But early this morning it was made unavailable, and everyone presumed Apple was behind it. But apparently, the app has not been pulled from the App Store by Apple, but rather by the developers because of high demand.

The guy team behind the app, Allen the Geek, writes on its site:

The Hottest Girls app is temporarily sold out. The server usage is extremely high because of the popularity of this app. Thus, by not distributing the app, we can prevent our servers from crashing. Those who already have the app will still be able to use our app. To answer the question on everyone’s mind: Yes, the topless images will still be there when it is sold again. -ATG dev team

So is this BS? Is this just them covering up for Apple pulling it? I don’t think so.

Okay, the situation surrounding the App Store and its approval process continues to get weirder and weirder.

As you may have heard, an application featuring nudity first appeared in the App Store yesterday. Today, that app was removed, which everyone presumed was a move by Apple. But the developers said that the removal was its own doing because its servers were getting slammed with picture requests. Then more applications claiming to have nude photos started appearing. And now Apple is apparently saying none of these apps will be allowed in the App Store. But that seems to contradict its own rating system that now clearly allows for nudity.

This makes no sense. To the point where I’m not sure there is anyone actually in charge of all of this for Apple. Instead, I’m starting to think this whole system is run by a group of people, all with different thoughts on the approach Apple should take with apps. And none of whom seem to communicate with each other very well.

The tech blogosphere was abuzz yesterday with the news that Apple seemingly started accepting applications that contain nudity into the App Store. Now, it appears someone over at Cupertino as ultimately decided to reject the first such app to get into the store after all. In our tests, we could still locate the app via the iTunes link, but were unable to purchase it and download it to our devices.

Other applications with the new rating (”Rated 17+ for “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity.”) could still be downloaded without a problem, so it seems Apple just let ‘Hottest Girls’ slip through the cracks – something we suggested as a possibility yesterday as well – and has now fixed it.

Wait, what? There’s pornography on the Internet? When did this happen? It must be, like, a new thing, otherwise I cannot understand the curiosity over a newly updated iPhone app called “Hottest Girls”. It’s $1.99, and includes pictures of women, some of whom are topless. It’s almost like living in Europe, where topless women can be found on magazine covers and advertisements.

The web threw a hissy fit a couple weeks ago after some screenshots of the iPhone 3.0 beta software indicated that you would have to re-purchase apps that you had removed from your iPhone or iPod touch. But it looks like everyone can calm down now. In the latest iPhone 3.0 GM build, which went live shortly after the WWDC keynote on Monday, the ability to re-download an app you’ve already purchased, looks to be have been restored.

The blog AppAdvice did some digging and found that the new iTunes 8.2 software apparently includes some logic which allows it to tell exactly which iTunes account is authorized for app purchases made. This is to prevent users from sharing apps by signing out of one iTunes account and into another one on the iPhone itself.

Yesterday developer Rick Strom wrote a blog posted titled “The Incredible App Store Hype“, in which he detailed some of the revenue stats he was seeing from the iPhone applications that he had released (some of which rank on the App Store’s top apps lists), and what other developers could expect to make accordingly. His conclusion? That most of the 36,000 applications on the App Store aren’t selling at all – for many apps, most days go by without a single sale.

Surprised? You shouldn’t be.

As marketplaces go, the App Store has a very low barrier to entry that makes it easy for anyone to sell their wares, which means that it’s flooded with apps. There’s no way Apple could prominently present these 36,000 applications to users without overwhelming them, which means most apps fall into obscurity as soon as they’re submitted. If you can’t find a way to get the word out, nobody is going to find your app on their own.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Apple’s App Store has been more successful that even Apple ever imagined. It entered a market that had been completely controlled by carriers and handed the keys over to third-party developers to make their own apps. Just over nine months later, over 35,000 of those apps had been made which have been downloaded over a billion times. So it’s surprising when you see numbers like the ones Lightspeed Venture Partners published yesterday, estimating that Apple had made only somewhere between $20 and $45 million dollars in revenue off of the App Store. Surprising, until you dig deeper.

First, I’m not convinced these numbers are sound. While the author, Jeremy Liew, makes some good calculations, the numbers are still drawn largely from a survey. He did this because Apple doesn’t release actually numbers for App Store sales beyond the big numbers like a billion downloads. But Apple has given out what are probably better numbers than the survey results numbers over the past year. For example, back in August, none other than Steve Jobs himself said the App Store was pulling in $1 million a day in sales. Now, that was a long time ago, and the App Store has grown tremendously since then, but let’s go with that figure for argument’s sake.

\Lightspeed has done a little math on the iTunes app store and found that Apple made between $20 and 45 million on iPhone Apps so far. Their methodology took the total number of apps sold – $1 billion – and the average price of iPhone apps – about $2.65.