It is now certain, the iPhone will have — one day — a USB-C socket to replace the famous Lightning. Present for ten years on iPhones around the world, the Lightning port will be replaced in the coming months by the admission of Apple executives. A change that was imposed by Europe.
Building on the passage of this law which brought down one of the web giants, the institutions of the old continent do not want to stop there. Indeed, after changing the way we charge our iPhones, politicians want to review the way we install applications. Here again the European Commission assures that it acts for the good of consumers.
Europe feels strong and wants to fight Apple
In particular, it asks Apple to make access to third-party services easier, or to allow third-party solutions, in competition with native applications, to have the same chances of being downloaded. When it comes to developer funding and Apple's commission, Europe is very clear.
The Apple brand must open the App Store to other payment systems. Apple cannot be the only company that maintains order on its application download platform. But in one part of the draft European text, MEPs go further.
Have App Stores in the App Store?
One of the proposals mentions the idea of having third-party solutions directly in the App Store. It would be possible for a company, like Huawei or Amazon, to offer their own application store in iPhones. Today Apple bans this feature, judging that it could endanger users.
In its defense, the Apple brand uses a very strict protocol before letting an application enter the App Store. All the applications that can be found there are thus announced by Apple as “reliable” although there are, as always, exceptions.
With this new project, Europe could undermine the security at the heart of our iPhones, by favoring free competition. For their part, European politicians assure that this argument does not hold water and that Apple above all wants to maintain its monopoly and its lucrative 30% commission on purchases within the App Store. Over the year 2021, it brought Apple the small sum of 133 billion dollars.
As a reminder, other regions of the world have already legislated on the issue of the App Store. For several months, Apple has accepted third-party payment systems in its application in South Korea. The legal battle lasted months, but it created a precedent which may be very useful in the months to come in Europe.
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By : Keleops AG
