To run on the iPhone, full versions of both browsers have to be downloaded
Are Android and iOS Browsers the Gatekeepers of the Digital Markets Act? Probing Alternative Payment Systems in the App Store and the Operating System on the iPhone
The iPhone’s app ecosystem is about to go through its biggest shake-up since the App Store launched in 2008. The Digital Markets Act of the European Union will come into effect in March, and Apple announced today how it plans to change the rules relating to the release of their mobile operating system. The big news is that third-party app stores will be allowed on iOS for the first time, breaking the Apple App Store’s position as the sole distributor of iPhone apps. The changes will be in the new version of the operating system in March.
Under the new terms, apps distributed through the App Store that choose to use an alternative payment system will pay a 17 percent commission (rather than 30 percent) on digital goods and services. The commission rate is 10 percent for apps that are currently eligible for the reduced small business rate by Apple. The additional 3 percent fee then applies for developers that choose to use Apple’s payment processing system.
We’ll have to wait and see whether Apple’s changes, including its new commission rates, will satisfy its loudest critics, such as Spotify and Epic Games, which have fought hard against the so-called “Apple Tax.” After years of heated court cases and theoretical debates, we are about to find out if people care more about alternative app stores or Apple’s in-house options.
As well as designating iOS, Safari, and the App Store as core platform services, the European Commission also opened an investigation into whether iMessage should be included (which would include having to make it interoperable with rivals), but reports suggest it might avoid being designated, and today’s announcement from Apple makes no mention of changes coming to iMessage.
But in the EU, we’re likely to see these revamped browsers in the App Store as soon as iOS 17.4 drops in March: Google, for one, has been working on a non-WebKit version of Chrome for at least a year. European users are going to have a serious browser war with their phones.
Apple is clearly only doing this because it is required to by the EU’s new Digital Markets Act (DMA), which stipulates, among other things, that users should be allowed to uninstall preinstalled apps — including web browsers — that “steer them to the products and services of the gatekeeper.” In this case, iOS is the gatekeeper, and WebKit and Safari are Apple’s products and services. The same section of the DmA states that Microsoft must allow people to disabling Bing web search and uninstall Edge in order to cause other changes.
