They absolutely could technically. The more important questions are:

- Is there a big enough reason to motivate them to do so?

- If given a "legitimate" justification, would they?

If either of those are "yes" then the question we need to know is: "Is there any appeal, oversight, etc?"

This is how it starts.

I think the concern is that Apple could exert influence over third party apps/networks because they control access to all Apple users. That problem doesn’t really exist when it comes to Apple disabling entire iPhones of certain users.

This would be a customer action — it affects one person. Unless you’re implying they’d disable the phone of every user of a certain app or something to that effect.

With these emails they could trivially, and surgically, cut off a developer from every customer. It is a one-to-many action that also has no obvious other side effects (unlike bricking users phones).

Not sure where I stand with this, but wanting to point out that the added powers this gives Apple are very real and different from the ones they had before (again, maybe this is a good thing, but it’s undeniable that it is a different thing).