Sorry, my bad. It seems I was thinking of PhoneGap, which packages HTML5 apps for mobile devices https://build.phonegap.com/

I believe on some Android platform (such as Amazon App Store) you can even charge for HTML5 apps, so it's not unprecedented.

However Apple app submissions requirements state you have to have sufficient functionality to warrant providing a native application. Not surprised that this code didn't make the grade, but as mentioned if they were able to make use of UI framework or put through PhoneGap could resolve the issue.