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

We are pleased to respond to the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s inquiry dated July 31, 2009, requesting information regarding Apple’s App Store and its application approval process. In order to give the Bureau some context for our responses, we begin with some background information about the iPhone and the App Store.

Apple’s goal is to provide our customers with the best possible user experience. We have been able to do this by designing the hardware and software in our products to work together seamlessly. The iPhone is a great example of this. It has established a new standard for what a mobile device can be—an integrated device with a phone, a full web browser, HTML email, an iPod, and more, all delivered with Apple’s revolutionary multi-touch user interface.

Apple then introduced something altogether new—the App Store—to give consumers additional functionality and benefits from the iPhone’s revolutionary technology. The App Store has been more successful than anyone could have ever imagined. Today, just over a year since opening, the App Store offers over 65,000 iPhone applications, and customers have downloaded over 1.5 billion applications.

The FCC's questions were replied to with unsurprising answers from Apple. The reply to the Google Voice question answers the issues around Apple and AT&T's possible collusion to block Google Voice. Apple indemnifies AT&T and claims responsibility for solely blocking GV applications. Apple claims that they are "continuing" to review the impact of native iPhone Google Voice applications. They also encourage Google to develop and deliver a Google Voice Web Application for the iPhone. This last statement explains how Apple wants to prevent these applications from access native functionality: (1) block access to Push Notification Services and more critically (2) block access to the native Contact database. My experience tells me that Google is clever - and that they will continue to fight Apple about native iPhone approval but they will also create a first-class iPhone Web Application. If I were the product manager at Google, I would develop an iPhone portal site that helps iPhone users (1) sync their contacts to their Google Address Book and then (b) installs an iPhone Web Application with full offline capabilities.