Apple thought it had closed out its longest-running fight with European regulators. A coalition of 18 developer, publisher, and consumer groups just told Brussels it hasn’t.
The dispute traces back to Apple’s court loss in July, when the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg upheld the European Commission’s decision that both the App Store and iOS qualify as “core platform services” under the Digital Markets Act — rejecting Apple’s argument that the law’s requirements were unlawful and disproportionate. In response, Apple announced a sweeping overhaul of its EU business terms on August 18, and the European Commission publicly welcomed the changes as the product of “close dialogue” between the two sides. Developers can sign the new terms now, with the new structure taking effect October 1.
What Apple Actually Changed
The revised terms replace Apple’s earlier, widely criticized Core Technology Fee — a per-install charge that drew comparisons to a tax on simply being popular — with a flatter, percentage-based structure. Apps that link out of the App Store to complete a purchase elsewhere now pay a 15% commission; apps that stick with Apple’s own in-app purchase system pay 26%; and the old Core Technology Fee is replaced entirely by a Core Technology Commission — a straightforward 5% cut on digital transactions inside any app distributed outside the App Store altogether, whether through an alternative marketplace or direct sideloading. On paper, it reads like real movement: a fee model built around actual transaction volume rather than a fixed charge that could bankrupt a suddenly-popular free app regardless of whether it ever made a cent.
The European Commission’s initial reaction backed that framing. But the developer and publisher groups who actually have to operate under these terms don’t see it the same way — and on September 9, 18 of them said so publicly and jointly.
“Profound Disappointment”
In a joint open letter coordinated by the Coalition for App Fairness and signed by organizations including the European Game Developer Federation, the European Publishers Council, the European Tech Alliance, France Digitale, News Media Europe, Euroconsumers, and Uptodown, the coalition expressed what it called “profound disappointment” with the Commission’s apparent endorsement of Apple’s terms without first consulting the businesses and users the DMA was written to protect.
The specific objections are pointed. The coalition argues the 15% steering fee directly conflicts with Article 5(4) of the DMA, which requires that developers be allowed to communicate and transact with their own users free of charge — a fee attached to that communication, they argue, defeats the article’s purpose regardless of the rate. They also warn the 5% Core Technology Commission is structured to prevent any alternative app store from ever reaching competitive scale, since it applies on top of whatever fee the alternative store itself charges. And the mandatory developer registration and app-review requirements Apple still imposes on apps distributed outside its own store, the coalition argues, preserve exactly the gatekeeping control the DMA was designed to dismantle in the first place.
Jari-Pekka Kaleva, managing director of the European Game Developer Federation, put the comparison bluntly: “Other platforms like Windows and Linux charge neither platform nor distribution fees at all for self-distribution, demonstrating that the levels proposed by Apple are neither technically nor operationally necessary.” It’s a comparison Apple has heard before in this fight, but one that lands differently now that the company has already lost its core legal argument and is negotiating from a position where the Commission itself has signaled satisfaction.
Apple, for its part, maintains the new terms resolved its disagreements with the Commission through what it describes as close collaboration, and has not publicly responded to this specific coalition letter as of this writing. The Commission’s own stated posture is to monitor how the new terms perform in practice once they take effect October 1 — which means the real test of whether this dispute is actually settled, or merely paused, arrives the moment developers start operating under the new fee structure at scale.
What This Means for Philippine Founders
Most Philippine app developers distribute through the App Store rather than building an alternative EU marketplace, so this dispute won’t touch them directly today. But it’s worth watching for two reasons. First, whatever fee structure survives this fight in Europe tends to become Apple’s template elsewhere — the original Core Technology Fee model, developed for the EU, was widely expected to inform how Apple approached similar regulatory pressure in other markets, and a successor structure forced by this coalition’s pressure would likely follow the same path. Second, any Philippine startup with EU ambitions — a fintech app, a gaming studio, a content platform targeting European users — should treat October 1 as a real deadline to understand, not a distant regulatory footnote: whether a 15% steering fee, a 26% in-app fee, or a 5% commission on alternative distribution applies will materially change unit economics for any app doing meaningful transaction volume with European users, and that math is worth running now rather than after the new terms are already live.
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