In order to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple has announced a set of sweeping changes to iOS and the App Store in the European Union. First and foremost, starting with iOS 17.4, users in the European Union will be able to download and install applications from outside of the App Store. On top of that, alternative application stores will become possible as well.
When a developer submits an application to Apple, the developer can choose to distribute the application through the App Store, alternative application stores, or both. Apple will not charge a commission on installations from outside the App Store, and it will also allow alternative payment processors, over which Apple will also not charge any additional fees. Apple will, however, charge something called a “Core Technology Fee”.
Under the new terms, apps distributed through the App Store which choose to use an alternative payment system will pay a 17 percent commission (rather than 30 percent) on digital goods and services. This commission rate falls to 10 percent for any apps that currently qualify for Apple’s reduced “small business” rate. The additional 3 percent fee then applies for developers who choose to use Apple’s payment processing system.
The company is also introducing a new type of fee for particularly popular apps. The new Core Technology Fee will charge developers EUR0.50 (around 54 cents) per annual app install; however, this fee only kicks in after a million annual installs in the EU. Apple estimates that over 99 percent of developers will either “reduce or maintain the fees they owe to Apple” under the new business terms and that “less that 1 percent” of developers would pay a core technology fee.
Jon Porter at The Verge
Overall, developers in the EU will be paying a lot less to Apple than developers in the US and elsewhere, while also gaining more options of distributing their applications outside of the App Store. I’m already seeing some serious rumblings in Apple developer circles over on Mastodon, where US-based developers are not happy these serious cost reductions will only apply to EU developers. The only kink in the cable is this “Core Technology Fee”, though, as the total bill for that nebulous cost can balloon quickly.
Apple will still check applications outside of the App Store for safety, security, and privacy, though, with a system very similar to how macOS handles applications outside of the Mac App Store right now through a new – to iOS – notarisation system. This notarisation will not check applications for quality (because as we all know, the App Store is a beacon of quality) or content (hello emulators!).
Another major change coming to iOS is the availability of browsers other than Safari. Right now, even if you think you’re using an alternative, non-Safari browser on iOS, you’re really just using a skin on top of a hobbled version of Safari. In the EU, starting with iOS 17.4, non-WebKit browser engines like Firefox’ Gecko or Chrome’s Blink can come to iOS, and live as equal citizens on your iOS device.
Furthermore, NFS on iOS will be opening up in Europe, giving European users the ability to use services other than Apple Pay and Wallet with NFC, and even set them as default. Apple is also allowing game streaming services to come to iOS, and this change happens to be available worldwide instead of being restricted to just the EU.
These are sweeping changes to how iOS and the App Store works, but much to the chagrin of US-based users and developers in my Mastodon timeline and elsewhere, they’re exclusive to the European Union. It’s unclear if Americans can import EU devices to gain access to these new features, or if they need EU-based Apple IDs. Let the grey market provide.
Eager to see how Gruber will spin this as a win for Apple
According to the article…
The way I understood it, Apple will still want to “approve” other stores. I’m assume they can also revoke their approval at any time, if deemed necessary.
teco.sb,
That seems to be the case. I do wonder if apple’s new “Core Technology Fee” could be subjected to antitrust lawsuits. After all, to have apple charging fees for app sales of competitors goes against free market principals. This is going to be the new “apple tax” – charging fees for transactions they aren’t even a party to except by force.
I don’t know if there are any exceptions for free software, but if not this is a real bummer for the prospects of a FOSS store ending up owing apple fees to distribute FOSS.
I guess that’s the end of free popular apps in EU? Since now free apps will need to pay a lot of fees to Apple, and somehow they need to get the funding (so, users will pay).
most apps are just websited on the iOS. So does it matter any more?
Well, the fees got lower, but it still comes across as a market controlled walled garden to me. This is “less bad”, but I don’t feel they made things right. Owners and developers are still not going to be allowed to do business on their own without apple’s coercive oversight.
> In the EU, starting with iOS 17.4, non-WebKit browser engines […] live as equal citizens on your iOS device.
Well…
From [this page](https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-browser-engines/):
> * Not have the default browser entitlement
So, apart from the huge list of arbitrary requirements that Apple can decide to enforce their own way to bully any browser that is not Safari, the alternative browsers won’t be “equals” since they won’t open links from other apps…
And I’m not sure Mozilla would want to risk having to pay Apple 0.5EUR per annual install when they provide their browser for free, anyway.
Here’s are a few predictions.
Once the initial excitement of a few techie obsessives runs it’s course nothing much will have changed. Almost all of Apple customer will continue to use the Apple App store because side loading and alternative app stores brings no actual benefit to end user other than for that very small minority (vastly over represented in places like this) that care about the principal of the thing. Most of those ordinary customers and consumers who actually use non-Apple app stores will notice no differences, a small but significant minority will get themselves into an muddle about who it is they are transacting with, a smaller minority will be ripped off by the inevitable predators that come cruising in these new waters.
The whole thing is in reality a great big nothing burger. From the end user consumer perspective this is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. The EU may well persist with pursuing and tweaking this for years, after all a significant part of the EU bureaucracy (like all bureaucracies) does stuff in order to justify it’s own existence, and there is a part of the EU apparatus that wants to contain US tech dominance but are faced with the reality that Europe is not producing it’s own competitive tech innovations.
This is going to be just a bigger and probably even more irritating nonsense than that absurd, and daily irritating, EU mandated cookie warning (does anybody not want that thing to go away, does it actually improve anything?).
Strossen,
Owners deserve the right to use their hardware how they please without interference from apple and apparently we still do not have this.
Nobody was predicting a massive shift, vast numbers of users were still going to stay loyal to apple. That’s fine and was always going to be the case. But that apple still doesn’t allow sideloading…this is so disappointing! If apple are allowed to get away with this under the EU laws, then there will have been no point in those laws at all.
Can’t edit…
Consumer rights are not a nothing burger. What apple are doing is objectively bad for competition, and of course that is exactly why they do it, but they shouldn’t be allowed to. This is exactly the sort of anti-competitive behavior that antitrust is supposed to prohibit. The EU are are right to intervene here, they should have done so years ago.. But I guess we can agree, if apple are allowed to continue forcing their own market controls, and enforcement is as toothless as it appears to be, then there will have been no point in the EU getting involved. We need relief from apple’s antitrust abuse, but this doesn’t do it.
Maybe instead of making dumb laws that don’t accomplish anything the EU should support helping companies in the EU to complete with Apple and Google.
China did.
Windows Sucks,
What exactly did china do?
To do business in china, you must abide by the ruling communist party. I’ll grant you they don’t take any crap from corporations, which I guess is your point. But china has no interest in advocating for consumers, they are fully supportive of walled garden restrictions as long as the government controls it. What lesson you think the EU should take from china? Honestly I’m expecting it will not be compatible with consumer interests, but I’ll hear what you have to say.
People must have not looked at Apples website, in the end the EU has screwed its self again trying to punish US companies for their lack of innovation.
If you go to Apples site, according to Apple’s calculator, iPhone sideloading will not decrease prices. If anything, developers will pay even more money to Apple than what they’re paying now. That doesn’t include costs related to operating their own app marketplace, a third-party payment processor, and customer care-related costs.
I don’t see this being a big deal once developers get hit with the costs.