Removing iPad support from app

Question

I uploaded an app to the App Store a while ago, but I have to delete the iPad support for different reasons. I am not talking about removing the app from the iPad App Store, only removing the iPad support. The Developer website states the following:

Developers who wish to issue updates, but remove device support, have three choices:

• Fix their app so that it can work on the devices they originally set out to support.
• Target a newer version of iOS that requires a newer device.
• Remove their app from the store, and upload the new app with a different bundle ID.

The problem is that if I remove the app from the app store and upload it again, I can not use the same app name. That is not an option.

Is there any way out of this mess?

Answer 1

Answering my own question - no, there is no other way! I ended up creating a decent looking iPad app to fix the problem.

Answer 2

Apple will not allow you to remove support for iPad if you ever offered it on a given app name. Further, the app has to be well enough designed for iPad that Apple likes it enough to allow it to pass. We had an app rejected for this reason.