Epic's battle with Apple continues
1 Facebook x.com Reddit
Not a single major American application developer has dared Sign up for the new App Store rules allowing external payment links because there are actually no savings, Apple told the judge during testimony Friday.
Apple revised its rules after Epic's initial lawsuit, which Apple largely won in 2021. The only area where Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers ruled in favor of Epic was anti-steering — prohibition on the use of third-party payment systems.
After some time spent developing new rules, in January 2024, developers were allowed to include external payment links in App Store listings.
To date, Apple has received just 38 applications out of more than 65,000 registered app developers offering in-app purchases, according to Bloomberg's Friday evening hearing report. None of the 38 were from large companies.
The main reason, according to the developers, is that if you use a third-party option, the fees will be essentially the same or potentially higher. Instead of the App Store commission of 15 to 30 percent, Apple will require a 27 percent commission for using the App Store platform.
Apple's fee does not include third-party payment processor costs, which would likely push the total fees to more than 30 percent, a court heard Friday. Apple Vice President of Finance Alex Roman acknowledged in testimony that Apple did not take into account the cost of using a third-party payment processor for developers when revising its rules.
Judge Gonzalez-Rogers then criticized the company for missing this consideration.
“I think the goal was to maintain the business model and revenue that you had in the past,” she said. Epic filed a complaint in court that Apple did not comply with the terms of the previous decision.
Apple says it followed the guidelines outlined in Gonzalez's original ruling, but the judge was skeptical. Having learned that the committee that revised the rules — including Apple CEO Tim Cook — unable to figure out the total cost of using third-party payment systems for developers, she said, “I'm looking for data, and it looks like you've all made a lot of decisions without data.”
The fee and lack of data on overall development costs appear to contradict Apple's initial claim that the changes it would make would lower prices for app users. Apple has another opportunity to influence the judge's opinion as the hearing resumes on May 13.
Follow AppleInsider on Google News.
