Apple last week announced an insanely complex set of changes to its App Store terms in the EU, and hidden in the small–print is one sign that the company might be reducing its standard commission from 30% to 20%, and that it may make this change globally.
If so, it would be the first time the company has ever reduced its 30% cut for all developers, and might go a long way to tackling its legal battles with antitrust regulators around the world …
We last week reported on a set of sweeping changes Apple made to its App Store terms in the EU.
Deliberately convoluted terms?
To say that the new terms are convoluted would be a major understatement. Even before getting into one complex set of changes, we had to open by describing when they do and don’t apply.
Apple has announced additional changes to business terms in the European Union. The changes do not apply to apps distributed via alternative app marketplaces. They also do not apply to communication and promotion offers that use static text inside an app. They only apply to links that direct users to the web, as well as in-app alternative payment service providers.
As for the terms themselves, there’s a choice between a 5% commission and a 13% commission that is a 10% cut for some developers some of the time. There’s a fixed-price fee which is being replaced by a percentage fee, but not yet. Plus Apple is appealing the basis for these changes, so they may again change.
Flighty founder and Apple Design Award winner Ryan Jones said on X that literally nobody he knew could figure out what the terms really mean.
John Gruber blames both the EU and Apple for the complexity, but suggests that Apple may have deliberately made its own terms hard to understand.
That seems largely by design on Apple’s part: byzantine compliance with a byzantine law. Because it’s so complicated and hard to understand, it’s difficult even to summarize with a headline describing what’s new. Even if you understand it enough to just want to express anger at Apple for spiteful compliance and greed, it’s hard to sum up why you’re angry in a succinct headline or tweet.
May point to a 20% standard commission globally
Small Business Program members can stick with the standard deal and see Apple’s cut reduced from 15% to 10%.
But Gruber notes that one interpretation of the new terms is that other developers in the EU may in future pay 20% commission instead of 30%, at least on in–app purchases. If that’s correct, it may imply a global rollout of the reduced cut.
These new terms could be read to suggest that developers who stick with the App Store and Apple’s IAP now pay just 20 percent commission under the new EU terms. That’d be really weird, insofar as it would mean that developers in the EU get an 80/20 split for App Store distribution + IAP, but apps everywhere else in the world still get 70/30 for the same thing.
That doesn’t make sense unless there’s another shoe to drop, and Apple is going to reduce IAP to 80/20 worldwide soon. (Which would be a great move on Apple’s part — something that would actually earn them back some developer goodwill.)
Given that Apple is battling antitrust regulators all around the world, not just in the EU, and that this includes its home market of the US, that could be a very smart move.
Photo by ahmad saad on Unsplash
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