Publishers warn Apple’s new App Store terms preserve excessive fees and undermine the DMA

Apple’s planned changes to its highly criticised fee structure by new terms do not bring the platform into compliance with the DMA. The new terms maintain unacceptable fees on digital transactions publishers generate on their apps, whether using the Apple payment system (26%), an alternative in-app payment system (20%) or sending users outside the App Store to complete a purchase - linkout (15%). Furthermore, when apps are downloaded from an alternative market place, Apple is imposing a new Core technology Commission of 5%.

These fees are not justified by the reality of the service provided by Apple’s App store, and maintain an unjustified revenue stream for the gatekeeper, at the expense of app developers and ultimately consumers.

EPC’s Executive Director Angela Mills Wade said:

“A platform fee can only be justified where the platform plays a material role in bringing a paying customer to the developer. When a reader of a publisher’s free content chooses to subscribe, converts from a trial, or renews, upgrades or reinstates an existing subscription, that value has been created by the publisher, through its journalism, its brand and its relationship with its readers”.

“Apple has no justification for taking a substantial cut from transactions it did not generate. These fees are not payment for customer acquisition, they are a toll imposed by a gatekeeper on the publisher’s own commercial relationship with its readers. Publishers, not platforms, should reap the rewards of the audiences, products and subscription businesses they have worked to build.”

These new fees fall well short of the fairness and competition the DMA was designed to deliver. Under the DMA, gatekeepers like Apple must allow developers to offer and conduct transactions outside of the App Store free of charge. Publishers' customers must be able to buy subscriptions via the App Store, without publishers being subject to a disproportionate tax from Apple.

Angela continues: “If the Commission accepts these terms, the DMA will have failed in one of its fundamental objectives: to make digital markets fairer and more contestable. Apple is able to impose fees of this scale across the ecosystem only because of the gatekeeping position the DMA was expressly designed to address. The Commission must not allow the exercise of gatekeeper power to be repackaged as compliance. The DMA was designed to curb precisely this kind of abuse, and it must be enforced accordingly.”

The EPC has consistently called for robust enforcement of the DMA to ensure that gatekeepers such as Apple apply fair terms to app developers, including publishers.

We urge the Commission not to accept Apple’s new terms as DMA-compliant, and to continue its work towards robust and effective enforcement that protects media plurality, editorial independence and fair competition, ultimately safeguarding the interests of European consumers.

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