La Digital Markets Law It has to be fulfilled in the territory of the 27 countries that make up the European Union. This has caused Apple to have to move to adapt to the changes introduced in this antitrust law. Many of these changes They will change the way we know the iOS ecosystem with the arrival of alternative app stores or the release of the NFC chip for payments with systems other than Apple Pay. However, Why, if Apple already has everything set up to expand these changes in the European Union, does it not do so in the rest of the world?? The answer is simple: only 7% of the App Store's revenue comes from the EU.
Apple only collects 7% of App Store revenue in the European Union
In the month of March the cambios on the Apple devices of all users in the European Union who update to iOS 17.4, a version that is currently in beta period. This update includes more than 300 modifications to comply with European Union antitrust regulations led by the Digital Markets Law that we have heard so much about in recent years.
One of the main modifications is the arrival of alternative application stores to the App Store so users will be able to install third-party apps without going through the Apple store. For the Big Apple, this is a serious security problem that goes against everything they have worked on in recent years around privacy and user protection, this is how Tim Cook commented at the economic conference with the data from the first fiscal quarter a few days ago.
Just for context, the changes apply to the EU market, which represents approximately seven percent of our global App Store revenue.
Furthermore, we have been able to know that The revenue that Apple obtains from the European Union App Store is only 7%. This means that the impact of economic gains may not be as great as expected. But it also explains one of the reasons why Apple might not have wanted to expand all these functions to the rest of the world. Changing payment methods and releasing NFC to pay with other payment systems represents a loss of income that is smaller if these changes are located in one region of the world.
However, Apple asks for caution and to wait for what this adoption will be like. In fact, this is what Tim Cook said a few days ago:
In terms of predicting the choices that developers and users will make, it is very difficult to do so accurately. So, we'll see what happens in March.