According to Apple App Store’s 2025 review data, third-party customized app compliance pass rate, such as GB WhatsApp, was as low as only 0.7% due to the fact that they violated Article 4.2.2 of the “App Store Review Guidelines” (prohibiting distribution of unauthorized functional modification packages). The closed system environment of iOS leads to GB WhatsApp being unable to install from official sources. But off-deployment is achieved in certain users via enterprise certificate signatures ($120,000 per certificate on average annually) or jailbreaking (iPhone jailbreaking percentage across the world has declined to 0.3%). But the failure rate of sending messages on such devices is as high as 39% (versus just 2.1% for official WhatsApp). For instance, in 2025, Kaspersky’s security firm indicated that 63% of installation packages in the imitated version of GB WhatsApp on iOS contained embedded keyloggers (capturing input events at a rate of 12 per second), which was more than 17% in its Android equivalent.
At the level of technical realization, the sandbox mechanism of iOS restricts GB WhatsApp from invoking core apis (the probability of sequential background location queries being caught by the system is as high as 91%), and it is not permitted to use the official WhatsApp shared data interface (the maximum synchronization error rate of iCloud is as high as 22%). GitHub code analysis of the developer community for 2025 shows that the “dual account opening” feature of iOS GB WhatsApp didn’t function due to the policy of sandbox isolation (the possibility of messages entangling between dual accounts was 38%), while the frequency of occurrence of this issue in Android was only 2.4%. Furthermore, the mandatory encryption authentication of APNs in the iOS platform causes the median delay of messages in GB WhatsApp to be 4.7 seconds (0.8 seconds on Android), and the loss rate of messages goes up to 57% when the network condition is bad (signal strength < -100 DBM).
In terms of legal risk, Apple initiated 17 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) cases in Q1 2025. Of these, the case against the GB WhatsApp distribution website had a 100% success rate, with the maximum compensation value per case being 2.3 million US dollars. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires the iOS 19 system to grant side-loading permissions. However, GB WhatsApp also has to pay an annual security certification fee of 480,000 euros (according to the EN 303 645 standard), which makes developers reluctant to develop the official iOS version (estimated research and development cost is 72% higher than for Android). For instance, in 2025, a Mexican user lost 200,000 chat records forever due to the use of GB WhatsApp with fake signatures. The court declared Apple as innocent and the third-party signature service provider needed to compensate the user for the damages (with a maximum amount of compensation being 320 US dollars per user).
User alternate solution data shows that the boot time of iOS users to run GB WhatsApp with Android emulators (e.g., iEMU) is up to 31 seconds (native Android is just 1.2 seconds), and the peak CPU load is 78% (the M2 chip temperature reaches 48°C). In the 2025 “Smart Switch” cross-platform tool chat record migration test, the success rate for GB WhatsApp to the official iOS client was only 14% (61% media file loss rate), while the reverse migration success rate (from iOS to Android) was as high as 89%. Besides, third-party theme engine compatibility on the iOS platform (e.g., iThemer) for GB WhatsApp theme files is only 32% (98% for Android), and custom font loading crash rate may be up to 44%.
On the market adaptability, in 2025 just 0.9% of the world’s iPhone users managed to run GB WhatsApp (on jailbroken devices), while the active percentage in the Android market reached 23%. The developer monetization scheme suggests that the average annual advert revenue (CPM of $0.8) of GB WhatsApp’s iOS version is 65% lower than its Android version (CPM of $2.3), and due to Apple’s IAP (In-App Purchase) mandatory commission of 30%, The cost of its “Advanced Anti-Detection” subscription was forced to increase to $7.99 a month ($4.99 for Android version), lowering the rate at which users make payments from 19% to 3.7%. According to Sensor Tower statistics, among users attempting the installation of the iOS version of GB WhatsApp during 2025, 94% returned to the original app or turned towards alternatives such as Telegram.