With the introduction of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by the EU, the rivalry between Meta and Applerevives slightly. Indeed, the DMA, supposed to promote competition by stimulating the applications market (among other things), has led Apple to review its pricing policy on its App Store. A small modification, about which Mark Zuckerberg could not help but express his skepticism during the presentation of Meta's fourth quarter results. According to him, these new rules are “ overwhelming ”.
A controversial pricing reform
Apple therefore complied with the new DMA regulations in reducing its commissions for application developers. So far so good. However, it has chosen to introduce new fees, named “ Core Technology Fee ”, which could be translated as Basic Technology Fees. This new tax will apply even to developers who follow the new rules imposed by the DMA.
An approach which, in fact, will rather cause < strong>an increase in loadsfor developers. Zuckerberg has criticized this approach, suggesting it will make things much more complicated. “ I would be very surprised if a developer chose to go to the alternative app stores they offer ” he explained. From his point of view, Apple's strategic choice goes completely against the intention of the DMA, which was rather to facilitate an open and more competitive environment.
Let's take a fictitious example to illustrate this change. Let's imagine that you have created an e-book sales application called ReadIt. By making it available on the App Store, Apple took a 30% commission from each digital book sale made via this application. This commission is now reduced, in response to the requirements of the DMA.
However, even if your app, ReadIt, continues to sell books through an alternative app store (Samsung Galaxy Store, Aptoide or SlideME for example) with lower commissions, you will have to still pay this new tax to Apple, the Base Technology Fee. Even if your app is not on the App Store. A way to make developers pay a operating fee on IOS.
General dissatisfaction< /h2>
Meta wasn't the only company to react negatively to Apple's new DMA strategy. Other industry giants have also joined the herd of the disgruntled: Spotify, Mozilla, Epic Games and Microsoft have also made their frustration known.
Epic Games described Apple's rules as “malicious compliance~60/em>” riddled with “ unnecessary fees ”. Spotify even hit a little harder by calling this situation “ extortion » and “ total farce ”.
Microsoft, a little less harsh in his remarks, nevertheless considers these new measures as a “ step in the wrong direction ”.
We will therefore note that a certain industrial front has united against the new policies of& #8217;Apple is rare enough to be underlined. While the DMA was supposed to promote a certain fairness in competition, it seems that Apple does not want to play too much.
- In order to meet DMA requirements, Apple reduced its App Store commissions for developers, but introduced a new fees.
- A new pricing policy which will not have failed to provoke a reaction from Mark Zuckerberg (Meta).
< li>Other giants of the sector have also joined in the discontent, such as Microsoft, Spotify or Epic Games.
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