Pulling the app from the app store strikes me as a whole different ballgame from removing the product from the apple store. Seems like that would cross a line from fairly normal tactics into essentially bricking devices for a large segment of customers.
Nevertheless, I would agree it would be a stronger/harsher manouver by Apple.
Would it be a proportionate action to what Nokia is/has been doing? Well, maybe. Reading about Apple's side of the story, it seems Nokia has already crossed more than one line into harsh/unfair legal/business tactics. ...So, certainly it's hard to predict what Apple is going to do.
The interesting thing here is that if you assume that Withings is making $50-60mm/year in revenues (my guess - based on the $192mm sale price earlier this year on one side, and the estimated number of app downloads and the price of their devices), spread across so many devices, they are probably little/not profitable and little/not cash-flow generating.
So, if the assumption above is correct, Withings would be a small/insignificant casualty for the Nokia side, in the context of this patents war, where much bigger money is at stake.
That's a good point, and definitely true. That is probably even worse for Nokia though. If existing users can continue relatively unaffected, but new customers are essentially out of luck, the platform is totally choked off from any growth. Without the app, I don't see how they could do anything other than stop selling the product.
I'm not familiar with the particulars of the dispute between Apple and Nokia, but it's pretty scary how wide ranging the collateral damage from this sort of thing could be.
Really hope the users' right to install software on their device gets regulated soon...