Brussels: Apple rewrote its European developer terms on 18 August, and the Commission said it approved of the result. The new business terms take effect on 1 October, and they replace a structure that regulators, developers and courts had all found difficult to police.
The old arrangement forced developers into a choice between two tiers, each with its own commission rates, and layered a Core Technology Fee on top that charged a flat amount per install once an app crossed one million annual downloads. That per-install charge drew the sharpest criticism. A free app with heavy usage and no revenue could owe money simply for being popular. Under the new terms, a single set of business terms applies to everyone distributing in the European Union, and the Core Technology Fee becomes a Core Technology Commission of five per cent on digital transactions in apps distributed outside the app store.
Simplicity is itself a regulatory outcome
Analysts who focus only on the headline percentages miss what changed. Apple will charge twenty-six per cent on digital goods sold through its own in-app purchase system, with rates varying by payment method and by the services a developer selects. Those numbers sit close to where they were. The structural shift is that a supervisor can now measure compliance against one schedule instead of reconstructing which tier a given developer sat in and whether an install crossed a threshold.
That matters because the Digital Markets Act obliges the Commission to assess whether a gatekeeper’s terms are fair and non-discriminatory. Assessing fairness across two parallel regimes with a usage-triggered fee required forensic work on every complaint. A flat commission structure converts that into arithmetic. Enforcement capacity, not generosity, is the currency being spent here.
Apple also widened eligibility to run an alternative app marketplace. From 1 October, developers meeting at least one financial stability test qualify, rather than facing the previous requirement that effectively limited the field to large firms able to post a substantial letter of credit. The Commission had treated marketplace access as central to the anti-steering case it pursued against Apple.
The critics have a point about the arithmetic
Epic Games called the revised fees junk fees, and the objection deserves examination rather than dismissal. A developer who steers a customer to an external payment page still pays Apple a commission on that transaction. The five per cent Core Technology Commission travels with the app even when Apple’s store, payment rails and billing systems play no part in the sale. Critics argue that a charge levied on transactions the platform does not process is a rent rather than a fee for service.
Apple’s answer rests on intellectual property. The company argues that developers use its frameworks, tooling and security infrastructure regardless of where money changes hands, and that a commission on downstream revenue captures that value. Courts in the United States have engaged with a version of this argument and reached mixed conclusions. European regulators have not yet ruled on whether a residual commission on external transactions survives the Digital Markets Act’s steering provisions.
The Commission’s approval therefore reads narrowly. It settles a specific dispute over business terms and alternative distribution. It does not immunise the new structure against future complaints, and the DMA gives the Commission standing to reopen the question if the market outcome disappoints.
The measurable test arrives over the next year. If alternative marketplaces attract meaningful catalogues and developers actually move transactions outside the app store, the settlement worked. If the effective cost of leaving stays within a percentage point or two of staying, developers will conclude the exit door exists on paper only. Three years of DMA enforcement have produced considerable process and modest observable change in how European users install software. Regulators now need numbers rather than terms sheets.
