Apple announces changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union (opens in new tab)

> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue

> this seems obscene

This is why I never cared about the 30% take: it was combining all the costs you'd have anyway into one simple number. People just acted like those things were all free just because Apple wasn't explicitly listing them.

Could you optimise your expenses better by splitting them?

Probably.

And that may even be worth forcing the issue from a competitive PoV, because it means some customers will be effectively subsidising others: A weekly updated 2 gigabyte app that's free in the app store gets its bandwidth paid for in part by a 30 Mb app that charges a $10 monthly subscription and gets an update every 3 months.

But even then, companies are expected to make profits. What's the level where it's fine for Apple to say "we want this much extra just for us"? For a lot of people the answer seems to be "zero!" — while this probably would not disincentivise Apple from making iOS given they also profit on the hardware, it would almost certainly disincentivise Google from bothering with any updates to Android.

It looks like updates can count as a first annual install:

A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app.

However, there's extra mumbo jumbo about "it doesn't count for 12 months after a first install is counted. But the next one after starts a new first annual install."

So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic.

$45k per month. Annually it's > $540,000

Also, updates do count.

"A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app."

The vast vast majority of apps doesn't

But I agree, as expected, this will go to round two.

Probably not even a new DMA just a court case about malicious compliance. The DMA was written expecting apples reaction

Still that they will reduce the commission fee is quite important on its own.

If this reduces the flood of free ad financed apps and moves the market to a more sustainable model I'm all for it (although I realise this stance is probably controversial)

It says "each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold" which I think means as long as you're updating your app at least once a year, you pay for each device your app is installed on (minus 1 million, which is a rounding error for the biggest apps).

Indeed. Clarification here in the calculator’s pop up:

https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...

Feels like Unity all over again. This time with a trillion dollar company instead of a billion dollar one.

This is only for devices in the EU, there aren't 2B devices here.

They’ve been discussing the implementation with the EU for some time so it seems extremely likely this has all been OKed already.

If they publish through the App Store they pay nothing though (for a free app), so won’t this just mean free apps stick to the Apple App Store and apps over the break even price (€0.50/30% commission in the App Store) go to side loading?

"First install per year". So reinstalls after a year will be charged again. Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides. I'd rather see it broken out than baked into a 30% fee. Doing so would massively incentivize smaller binary sizes.

Yes also for updates or pushed via mdm. But only once per account. Doesn’t matter how many devices you have on that account. It counts as 1 install every year.

Yes the fee is insane.

Is there VAT on that too?

So force the consumer to pay everything in a two sided market?

"first annual install"

> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue

> this seems obscene

The web browser is right there. You don't have to have an app.

As an aside, look how clear and well-written this web page is. I'm always blown away by how well the whole Apple ecosystem (even the the developer documentation) is designed

I think this point is going to be the biggest sticking point to EU regulators. Third party app stores not being able to reasonably distribute free apps is a massive competitive disadvantage.

Apple's lawyers have been working hard to make it non-viable for third-party app stores while still complying with the law I guess. Sounds like this will be a no go in it's first incarnation and EU will have to come back with an even stricter version probably removing all control from Apple. EU does not fuck around when it comes down to it with things like this.

The DMA gives realtively broad interpretation power to the the EU commission, so they can potentially shut this down without new regulation required.

It's obviously malicious compliance that hopefully isn't justifiable.

Apple is just trying to dodge regulations. They'll get slapped with a fine and told to behave soon enough.

Alternative app stores have to pay the fee on every install with no threshold.

Yes, except for nonprofits, educational organizations and such.

It's not free for Apple to host free apps either. Free apps get subsidized by IAP and other paid apps. An alternate app store would subsidize the install cost for free apps with the money they make from their cut of IAP and paid apps.

But why? Apple is providing the whole ecosystem, operating system, security, notarization etc - there are costs to be covered.

Of course there are costs incurred per install. Previously there were covered by a higher 30% fee on app costs. Now, with opening up the platform to alternative stores, the EU has pushed Apple to a per-install model.

So to me, this seems completely reasonable as a standard iPhone user.

I understand the security and performance of the platform costs more - that is why I use an iPhone not an Android.

Well, duh, it's designed to keep every app with reach bound to the Apple App Store.

I don’t understand this at all, is this really how it will work now?

Even if you sell an App for 2€ that would mean you will lose all the income from it to fees in 4 years if you release at least one update per year that users install? I must be missing something?

What stops you from having limited edition apps? Only 1 million copies and its gone, go download the next limited edition.

Glad this happened to be honest. Software shouldn’t be free.

It just means that the bar has been raised, no? There has been a certain accepted cost of doing business in the Apple sphere for years. They're just changing the price.

> Core Technology Fee — iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold.

Sounds to me like developers have to pay the per user fee no matter where the app is distributed.

It's not, actually. It's the salaries of the engineers who work on the frameworks and OS that underpin the apps these developers are writing.

Are you proposing we should go back to charging users for software updates? Personally, I think it makes more sense to take a cut from other people doing business on top of the platform.

Would it be possible to create multiple separate apps each having max 1M users? This Firefox1 app would host first million, then be removed from store but still provide updates. It would be replaced by Firefox2 app. And so?

Is there some clause in the contracts that says apps from same source will count as single app, no matter how many times they are uploaded as separate app?

I would love to easily hit a million installs on a side project app

Afaik there are currently no exceptions to apple's 30% fee. There are some apps, like netflix, that dont have to provide a link to subscribe, but I think thats the biggest exception.

Why wouldn't YouTube just distribute through App Store like normal? It's not like they are paying Apple per download there.

Well, that and meta is the very reason behind these changes.

> I think Apple is delusional in thinking that the EU will buy into this scheme, but who knows.

I think they're quite aware that they won't

but that will take half a decade, and in the meantime, Apple will have made another couple of hundred billion dollars

It’s a play for time hoping public opinion will change

50 cents per install per year is hilarious trolling from Apple. Who wants to place bets on who will sue them first over this detail? Will it be the EU? Epic Games?

This was an issue when people were discussing unity per install fees.

It seems updates also count. If they can cover that 50c for every non-paying user with the extra 10% profit on paying users they might switch.

*First annual install.* This is the first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge. A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app.

*One million free first annual installs.* Membership in the Apple Developer Program includes one million first annual installs per year for free for apps distributed from the App Store and/or alternative marketplaces.

*Fee for each first annual install over one million.* Developers will pay a Core Technology Fee of €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months.

If I reinstall an app 10 times over two years it’s 1.00.

That’s my guess.

Except the price only exists for large spenders in the first place.

Historically, from emails and the such made public through the courts, Apple has resisted making such deals.

Europe has a fairly blase attitude towards compliance costs in general.

For example, the official EC report on the cost impact of the EU AI Act finds that, for businesses who already have a Quality Management System (QMS), "An enterprise employing 50 persons would pay roughly EUR 159,000-EUR 202,000 for upgrading and maintaining the QMS, and bringing one AI product to market." (Notably, that estimate excludes costs of legal review.)

Around 200000 EUR for one product making use of AI would be seen as a heavy burden on startups and small enterprises in much of the world, but as far as I can tell, it's considered not particularly noteworthy by the EC.

Apple's cost structure announced today probably needs to be assessed in that context. Tech companies doing business in Europe are already used to various additional compliance-related costs of doing business.

Apple chooses this level of control for the iOS store. Being told your previous version was illegal doesn't entitle you to recoup the costs of compliance.

Those are just basic things which should have been implemented 10 years ago though. The fact the EU had to push laws for that is a bit shameful.

Apple is never gonna financially recover from these impossible demands.

Come on now, that is utter nonsense. Apple has simply found a way to make even more money out of what seemed like a bad deal for them. They are not recuperating anything, they are increasing revenue.

Many of the companies I work with have completely given up on operating in the EU because of this.

edit: Why downvote me for stating a matter of fact?

So now European users could be using Firefox with mobile gecko engine, but no one in the US will ever test with that because they're not allowed to have it. Fun!

Writing this on FF for iOS, the biggest reason I want to use the Firefox engine is for Firefox extensions. WebKit doesn't support extensions except the App Store ones in Safari, I want to use traditional extensions from AMO. Just let me use uBlock on my phone!

I do agree, the Firefox iOS UI is clunky, but I find it useful for stuff where I want to sync passwords or tabs. I use Safari for browsing the web casually because it's nicer, and the feature of swiping between tabs is so convenient.

Nitpick but a browser engine is much more than the rendering engine.

> Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.

This is ahistorical. Regular users switched to Firefox and Chrome in droves from IE. And it wasn’t to sync their bookmarks. It was because they provided a much better experience.

If Blink or Gecko are able to provide a better experience than WebKit on iOS that would certainly prompt many users to switch to browsers using those engines.

Um, no. Regular users care about being able to run ublock origin.

That's like claiming only mechanics are interested in what engine a car is running - regular users only care about the seat and steering wheel.

Regular users care about the experience of the browser. A superior rendering engine can potentially improve this experience.

That's exactly what I predicted for NFC when Apple announced Apple Pay. Apple kept developers from using any of the NFC APIs until they were ready to roll out Apple Pay, and then only allowed non-payment NFC after that. It gave them 10 years to establish Apple Pay.

Being the system default was obviously very convenient for customers and there would be a very high bar for any other payment app to compete, but Apple wanted to make absolutely sure there was no possible competition.

> Regular users really don’t care what browser is running the web pages they’re looking at, everyone who downloads chrome does so to get their synced bookmarks and history.

As a regular user - I do.

that's the case now but in the future you can now offer regular users features that currently only android chrome can do

Ah, I clearly didn’t read it closely enough. Thank you!

they have to do that anyway, or did you forget all the non-iOS mobile users?

They state the exact opposite in the second sentence of the article. Please, at least read the opening paragraph before commenting.

So I'm guessing you didn't read the article then?

No need to imagine, the answer is at the top of the article.

It does, but on closer reading looks restricted to EU, they certainly aren’t suggesting a , say, gecko based browser could be published globally outside the EU.

"New frameworks and APIs for alternative browser engines — enabling developers to use browser engines, other than WebKit, for browser apps and apps with in-app browsing experiences."

Yes, it's been Apple's modus operandi with the App Store from the start: trick consumers into thinking the App Store being a monopoly is the only thing that can protect them against malware, illicit and questionable app content, pirated software, scams, and fraud.

Most consumers understand those concepts and fear those things. Most understand nothing about the economic impact of monopolies and anti-competitive business behavior and the harms they cause consumers in the form of higher prices, lack of innovation, reduced choice, and poorer quality products and services.

So Apple plays off those fears by using language consumers understand, making them actually want the very monopoly that is being forced on them and actually harming them while making billions for Apple.

It's unethical behavior, no more defensible than Sam Bankman-Fried's effective altruism, a.k.a. "mostly a front." This is all right out of Apple's standard playbook.

> Apple is going full frontal attack and saying the DMA creates security risks

Because it does create security risks.

App code in 3rd party app stores is not going to be reviewed, which means anyone is free to craft a rootkit embedded in an app and release it to a 3rd party app store.

Enjoy!

It's my understanding that iOS is generally considered a more secure alternative than Android, and that part of this is the app review process, that is part of the App Store. So isn't there at least some truth in that opening this up will create a less secure environment?

If this creates security risks, then why is the Web somehow ok or otherwise not shut down?

Not only that, they're going to try and scare users away from third party app stores with warning dialogs:

> The changes also include new disclosures informing EU users of the risks associated with using alternatives to the App Store’s secure payment processing.

There are 22 instances of the word "risks" on that page. Pathetic.

Surely this is mathematically true though. More distribution channels and laxer average review processes will mean more malware distributed to users.

Yeah, right. I know there's this tendency in America to worship Europe but I can't help but laugh when anyone suggests a democratic government passes laws that are going to improve security. "We're from the government and we're here to help."

Yup. They could have security by allowing the user to see and control the sandboxing that the operating system imposes on the apps. The app store is not required, but they act like it is.

This anti-circumvention against DRM-loving companies is great, give them a taste of their own medicine.

They definitely talked with their lawyers and the EU regulators, but this doesn’t mean that where Apple ended up today was mutually agreed. They very likely ended up in disagreement and basically told their EU regulators to take them to court if they don’t like it. This happens all the time.

During USB-C debates, Apple reportedly tried to circumvent EU regulation and got an explicit public warning from EU commissioner who read the secret plan from the media outlets. Then they retracted their MFi for USB-C plan.

I'm reasonably sure Apple didn't reveal most of their compliance plans to EU, since they will ask Apple to implement the most strict interpretation of the regulation and it would be headaches in the court if there's any evidence that Apple knowingly ignored such requests.

They definitely consulted a bunch of lawyers. The App Store makes on the order of $100B profit annually. Given that, a reasonable budget for consulting lawyers - on a matter which may result in them losing a substantial amount of that profit - would be massive. Even $1B in attorney fees would be a tiny price to pay to protect that.

Yes, we know they talked with the EU, but we don't know the content of those discussions. It's easy to assume they were checking whether their proposed implementation would satisfy the regulators. It's equally likely, even more likely, they were gathering information, posturing and probing to see how the EU would react, to gauge how best to craft their scheme to outwit them and what they could or could not easily get away with.

You can hold a negotiation and still screw the other side over afterwards - isn't that actually the best way to do it? Holding a meeting first to learn what cards your opponent has in their hand is just a better way to play any game.

It's more likely that they felt the cost of challenging this was worth it from a cost/benefit standpoint.

I'm sure they did but Apple also Apple is having trouble selling Apple Watches with O2 monitors due to legal reasons.

Obviously this is a stalling move, which could be effective for years.

... in order to calculate likely fines so they could decide whether they'd still make a profit.

Looks like they're happy to pay fines to maintain their monopoly.

/flagrant-speculation

That would be following the Microsoft playbook when it comes to corporate crime in the EEA/EU.

This does not mean they actually follow law.

I am pretty sure that FB also has many lawyers, but they were repeatedly violating law. Sometimes clearly, blatantly and openly.

It could be, they are technically complying while trying in court to throw out the law.

Look at the long list of massive fines levied on the US tech giants for GDPR violations [1]. Every one of them consulted lawyers (and likely substantially ignored their advice).

[1] https://www.enzuzo.com/blog/biggest-gdpr-fines

I wonder whether Apple would rather lose the EU or lose the App Store monopoly.

The EU might not be worth 10% of annual turnover.

It’s “see what we can get away with” tactics in addition to stalling

For the same reason Trump has opened so many legal challenges in his trials. It's a stalling tactic. Every year Apple can continue their App Store business monopoly without adequate competition is another year Apple earns $100B (or whatever their profit is - Apple does not disclose the figures [1]). They are trying to delay any threat to that as long as possible. No doubt they have done their cost/benefit calculations very carefully, weighing the potential fines and legal fees against the revenue they will be able to keep earning this way, and they have decided this is the best way forward.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...

To protect their monopoly

Yeah well you are benefiting for Apple’s hardware and software so you need to pay. Can’t be a free-loaded just because you want to earn that extra bit of money while increasing the attack vector for the end user.

Unity wanted to charge for every single "install", where that category was defined so broadly that even loading the game in a web browser was an "install", and someone downloading and deleting and downloading the app over and over on a device was also repeated "installs".

Here Apple is tracking an install across the entire user account per year, so even if you have tons of devices and install the app on every single one of them, that's still just one "install".

That fee was per install, not per install-user-year.

Unity wanted to change their existing pricing structures in place.

The Apple change isn’t really comparable (not saying it’s good or bad) because Apple are introducing a new pricing structure.

Most genuine critics of Unity’s proposed changes were fine if it wasn’t replacing what existed.

> that’s assuming 1 smartphone/citizen, which is probably too much.

sure kids <5 years old probably don't own smart devices. But many those EU citizens will own also ipad, apple watch and probably some older devices that they use from time to time (as a backup)

They specifically excluded iPadOS, watchOS and TvOS.

Hi, bad person here, happily building apps for their devices.

They missed out on €0 because government entities, non-profits and educational institutions are exempt from the install fee.

Alternatively you can also just stick with the App Store and pay 15%/30% over revenue without install fee, which would also be €0 in your hypothetical.

If you had read you would have found that government entities are exempt from the CTF fee

Hitler watch out, apple app developers are trading your place in hell!

This counts one install per 12 month period, whether update or fresh install (new user). So it’s €0.50 per user device. For application providers that opt into the new terms and release updates every two weeks like clockwork even if there are no meaningful updates for 300Mb application bundles (Facebook, Duolingo, a few others)…this is likely a fair cost (and my suspicion is that yes, there's a premium, but it's probably not Apple's usual 20%+ premium on products since many applications would not be subject to this fee at all, even under the new terms).

It is not per update and the most significant thing is that it is also for apps that get distributed outside the app store. Which is the real issue and that is definitely insane

I don't think it includes updates. From the calculator [0]:

> The first time an app or game is installed by an Apple account in the EU in a 12-month period.

[0] https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...

paying for what? for NOT using their infrastructure? it's not just crazy, it's criminal

Well it does count updates. So this is just bullshit from Apple.

Microsoft is an american company, which is why a lawsuit by the american government with the threat of breaking it up worked.

The EU can't break up Apple. Apple is calling the bluff here.

Governments have enforced standards for a long time. There's always that tradeoff. Standardization has benefits, and at some point the government says that a standard is "good enough".

You can install whatever plug you want on your device - as long as it also has a USB-C plug on it too.

So if you come up with a truly revolutionary new plug and the market at large adopts it, then there's no reason the EU won't approve of it being the new standard.

The point of the standards is to ensure consumers aren't being fucked over by proprietary plugs that are incompatible with all the other devices out there, like what Apple was doing, not to enforce some arbitrary limit that says USB-C is the final form factor plug we'll ever be using

Even the WebKit wrapper browsers (including Chrome and Firefox) didn’t have access to JIT until iOS 8 when WKWebView was introduced. UIWebView is in-process and not allowed to use JIT.

IANAL but I speculate that having explicitly rejected competition could hurt Apple in certain legal proceedings?

That’s assuming the free market is what drives users to chrome and not: This browser is unsupported, switch to Chrome now

I think that monopolies are generally bad for the user, but I don’t think that government regulation is the proper solution.

Yes

F-Droid or just give me a repository. Something of the sort pkgsrc to let me install the tools I want to have on my phone.

Spirit of the law is defined. It's the first handful of sentences of any European regulation. And courts can and do rule in favour of lesser parties. If the legislature has made a clerical mistake in writing the law, the court can disregard the mistake (a technicality) and rule in the lines of the spirit of the law.

Yes, but these extensions work by intercepting the search results to your default search engine e.g. google and then redirectin that to kagi.com.

For example you type in "hacker news" it will first redirect to https://google.com/search?q=hacker%20news the Kagi extension will intercept this and redirect you th https://kagi.com/search?q=hacker%20news but this is often a hit and miss and the Kagi extensions had/has many problems. Which all could be easier if one could just select Kagi as a search engine natively in Safari.

Great point, I will revise my statement to "no developer who hopes any app they ever create will one day have more than 1M installs will choose these new terms, and I have no doubt that is exactly Apple's intention here.".