Apple Inc. said it removed a program from its iPhone store yesterday because the developer added pictures of topless women, violating the company’s policy against “offensive content.”

“Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content,” said Tom Neumayr, a company spokesman. “The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content.”

The $2 program, called “Hottest Girls,” was created by Allen Leung. He didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment and his Web site no longer contains information about the application.

The App Store, which opened in July 2008, offers more than 50,000 programs that run on the iPhone and Apple’s iPod Touch.

Apple gets a 30 percent cut of each application sold and distributes free programs at no cost to developers.