Commissions
Under the new terms:
- For App Store apps using Apple In-App Purchase, the commission will be 26 percent. For the vast majority of developers, including those in the App Store Small Business Program, Mini Apps Partner Program, or Video Partner Program, and for auto-renewing subscriptions after their first year, it will be 15 percent.
- For App Store apps using alternative payment processing, the commission will be 20 percent. Developers in the programs mentioned above will pay a reduced rate of 10 percent.
- For App Store apps that link out of the app to complete purchases, the commission will be 15 percent. Developers in the programs mentioned above will pay a reduced rate of 10 percent.
- For apps distributed via alternative app marketplaces or the web, Apple will charge a 5 percent Core Technology Commission.
A 5% Core Technology Commission on all sales is preferable to a Core Technology Fee on installs, and that hit at a time that is impossible to forecast; in particular it is possible for free apps that never charge anything to flourish, and to accept payments in a realistic way. The CTC is preferable to the CTF in much the same way that a fire burning down your kitchen is preferable to a fire burning down your entire house.
Apple is still, no matter their own verbiage, a bloodthirsty rent extractor, helping itself legitimately to fruits of labor that benefit their platform, but also illegitimately to the balance sheet of every such endeavor.
The Digital Markets Act was introduced to ensure that sideloading would be an available alternative, to essentially force open platforms that have been closed. Debates about the wisdom of this notwithstanding, in the biggest case, and up until recent developments in Android app marketplace governance also only case, it has failed to deliver the promises that were the entire point of the law.
This follows in the history of back-and-forth in being a strictly better, and also strictly simpler, proposal. But it is in no way a proposal that follows the letter of the law, or rolls back the continued insanity of, for instance, charging fees for linking out to your own web site and accepting payments there, using methods that in the vast majority of cases, Apple could not lay any claim to at all. (I call this insanity because it is universally reviled as a customer-hostile dick move, which, fig leaves of consumer protection aside (and EU consumer protection is generally miles ahead of tepid and variable US laws), serves the single purpose of lining Cupertino coffers.)
Worst of all, it does appear to be an approved, negotiated settlement. I have seen too much to assume competence from the European Commission, just as I have seen too much to assume good will from Apple. I suspect the chance of a negotiated settlement to appease EU-US tensions, or provide advantages in other negotiations, is not 0%.
For more details, see Michael Tsai's roundup. Like John Gruber, I am counting down the days until Apple drops in-app purchase fees below 30% to the point where the negotiated terms are no longer a positive development. (I do not assume the savvy that the EU rates would be indexed via a most-favored-nation construction to the worldwide fees.)