Spotify, Epic Games, and Others Argue Apple’s App Store Changes Do Not Comply With DMA

Spotify, Epic Games, Deezer, Paddle, and several other different builders and EU associations right this moment sent a joint letter to the European Fee to complain about Apple’s “proposed scheme for compliance” with the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

The 34 firms and associations don’t imagine Apple’s plans “meet the regulation’s necessities.” Apple’s adjustments “disregard each the spirit and letter of the regulation” and if left unchanged, will “make a mockery of the DMA,” in line with the letter. A number of particular elements of Apple’s plan are highlighted, together with the Core Expertise Charge, the Notarization course of, and the phrases that builders should settle for.

• Apple’s requirement to stick with the present App Store phrases or decide in to new phrases gives builders with “an unworkable selection” that provides complexity and confusion. The letter means that neither choice is DMA compliant and would “consolidate Apple’s stronghold over digital markets.”
• The Core Expertise Charge and transaction charges will hamper competitors and can forestall builders from agreeing to the “unjust phrases.”
• Apple is utilizing “unfounded privateness and safety issues” to restrict consumer selection. The “scare screens” that Apple plans to indicate customers will “mislead and degrade the consumer expertise.”
• Apple shouldn’t be permitting sideloading, and it’s making the set up and use of recent app shops “tough, dangerous and financially unattractive for builders.”

The businesses and associations are urging the European Union to take “swift, well timed and decisive motion in opposition to Apple.” The best way the European Fee responds to Apple’s proposal “will function a litmus check of the DMA and whether or not it could ship for Europe’s residents and economic system.”

Apple is required to adjust to the Digital Markets Act by March 7, and the app ecosystem adjustments baked are baked in to iOS 17.4. We predict to see iOS 17.4 launched early subsequent week, and that’s when different app marketplaces, different fee strategies, and the brand new phrases that Apple has designed for builders will go into impact.

In assist of the adjustments that it’s implementing, Apple right this moment published a whitepaper outlining the dangers that it’s trying to mitigate with the Notarization course of and different necessities different app marketplaces and the apps put in by these marketplaces should undergo.