Apple complies with European rules and opens the App Store to competition

The App Store will soon no longer be the only application store on the iPhone. In a press release published this Thursday evening, the Apple brand announces that it will open the App Store to competition within a few weeks. This historic change for Apple and the iPhone will take place at the beginning of March, when theDMA, a European law forcing Apple and large technology companies to open up to competition.

Historical changes

In detail, Apple announced that these changes should concern “iOS, Safari and the App Store”. The Apple brand wants to maintain a certain control over what is done outside the App Store. In order to ensure the security of users, of which as the smartphone manufacturer it is the guarantor, the Cupertino company will be able to veto the launch of an application outside the App Store.

If the rules for this preselection made by Apple have not yet been made public, they should be quite similar to what already exists in the internal regulations of the App Store. The Apple brand should also allow developers to be freer in their choice of payment system.

Today the solutions are limited. Developers must publish their application on the App Store and therefore must paya 30% commission on all transactions made. The latter going directly into Apple's pockets.

A decreasing commission

But at the beginning of March, things will change. Indeed, developers will still be able to publish their application on the App Store (or elsewhere) but they will no longer have 30% of their income taken by Apple as a right of passage. It will in fact be possible to go through third-party payment systems with much lower commission rates.

As for the Apple method, it will always be available but Europe has put barriers to it. In fact, it will be impossible to charge a commission higher than 17%. Small developers (who have less than a certain annual income) will even be entitled to a discount and a commission of only 10%.

Apple has already found a loophole in this system by adding 5 euro cents in additional fees per download for all applications that exceed one million sales. It will be interesting to watch at the beginning of March how this new financial mechanism is put in place. The choice of developers will then be crucial for the development of their application.