The Google play store has a ‘Spam and Minimum Functionality Policy’. It can take down apps for repetitive content, among other things. There could be violations of copying content or value or creation of multiple apps with highly similar functionality content and user experience.

There are organisations who sell the source code of the apps. There is a market place called CodeCanyon for the buying and selling of scripts, entire apps and components for a variety of languages and frameworks. Buying source codes of popular apps is quite a common practice everywhere in the world. There are at least 500 developers selling source code for popular apps. But just source code is not enough. There are clones of popular apps and there are clones of clones. These clones have no well-defined data usage and privacy policies. Source code apps are bought cheap. They could be slightly modified. They are then re-published on app stores. People marketing such apps through ads and/or in-app purchases. Apparently, these apps are similar to those developed by larger companies. These fast apps could hurt the consumers if sensitive data is compromised. Many are counterfeit or fake apps.