Starting next year, Apple will allow payments outside the app store

Since apps found their way into our lives, there have been two companies that have had a major impact on the selection of these. There is Google, which is the largest point of contact for applications in the Android world, but is not the only provider in the market, and Apple, which has always dominated the market on iOS as the only provider of apps. This supremacy is now being weakened.

The reason is not a voluntary relenting of the companies, but a consequence of the lawsuits currently pending worldwide against the corporations. In South Korea it was recently decided that Google and Apple should not be allowed to make decisions about payments for apps alone, while the EU is currently investigating whether it is a monopoly. Apple would like to anticipate that.

From next year, new rules will apply to certain apps under iOS. Then providers are allowed to bypass Apple’s payment system and link to external payment services within the app. A commission of 30 percent for the Californian company is then not due. This initially affects reading apps, magazine offers, newspapers, books, audio, music and video apps. Spotify and Netflix can look forward to, among other things.

The relaxed rules for games and in-app purchases should not apply. It’s no wonder that Apple earns a golden nose with this content. The question remains how long such resistance can be sustained. At the end of 2020, the first easing was announced. At that time, the commission for app developers was reduced to 15 percent if they had sales of less than 1 million dollars.

Own opinion:

It was foreseeable in recent years that the current practices around the App Store and Play Store could not be maintained forever. After all, developers had no choice but to follow Apple’s rules and give the company a generous share in the content, especially under iOS. I think that the end of the discussion is far from over and that in the foreseeable future Apple will also sharply reduce its commissions in order to be able to compete with alternative payment methods.

Via Bloomberg