Two Paths to the Same Destination
On August 18, 2026, Apple rewrote its Developer Program License Agreement for the European Union, replacing the widely criticized per-install Core Technology Fee with a flat 5% Core Technology Commission on digital transactions made through alternative app marketplaces or the web. Apple also eliminated the Initial Acquisition Fee and Store Services Fee, and dropped the requirement that alternative marketplace operators be legally incorporated in the EU. The new terms take effect October 1, 2026 (Apple Developer).
The timing is not incidental. The European Commission fined Apple €500 million on April 23, 2025, for breaching the Digital Markets Act's anti-steering obligations — finding Apple had failed to show its restrictions on telling users about cheaper offers outside the App Store were "objectively necessary and proportionate" (European Commission). Apple is still appealing that fine, but it plainly moved to defuse further non-compliance risk: the company describes the new terms as the product of "close collaboration" with the Commission (MacRumors).
The Case for the DMA's Hard Line
Credit where due: the DMA's enforcement threat produced something the original 2024 compliance plan never delivered — genuine simplification. Developers had spent two years warning that the per-install Core Technology Fee was a trap for any free app that went viral, since fees accrued on installs regardless of whether they converted to revenue. A flat 5% commission tied to actual transactions removes that asymmetry entirely. Dropping the EU-incorporation requirement is a real concession too: a US or Asian developer can now qualify for an alternative marketplace on financial-stability grounds alone, without setting up a European subsidiary first. If the goal of the DMA was to make contestability of the App Store's payment layer real rather than theoretical, this is measurable progress, and regulators are entitled to point to it as vindication of a statute critics called unworkable.
Why the American Path Has Been Slower and Messier
The contrast with the United States is instructive, and not flattering to the US approach. Apple has faced two live proceedings here — a Sherman Act monopolization suit and a long-running contempt fight in Epic Games v. Apple — and neither has produced anything close to the EU's clean rate.
The Justice Department, joined by 16 states, sued Apple in March 2024 for allegedly monopolizing the smartphone market; on June 30, 2025, Judge Julien Xavier Neals in the District of New Jersey denied Apple's motion to dismiss, finding the government had adequately alleged Apple holds roughly 65% of the US smartphone market and 70% of the "performance smartphone" submarket. That case is still in discovery — no remedy, let alone a fee structure, is anywhere close (Mintz).
Meanwhile, in the Epic injunction fight, a federal judge held Apple in civil contempt for charging a 27% commission on external link-out purchases — a rate courts found effectively nullified the injunction's purpose. Only after the Supreme Court declined to pause the proceedings did Apple, on August 14, 2026, finally file a revised proposal: 15% on most external purchases, with a reduced 5% tier for Small Business Program participants and 10% for certain partner categories. Epic immediately called the proposal "far outside the bounds" of what the court's guidance permits (TechCrunch). Two years after the underlying ruling, American developers still don't know their final rate.
The Trade-Off Regulators Should Notice
This is the steelman for the DMA's ex ante, negotiated-compliance model over the ex post, litigation-driven one that governs Apple in the US: a regulator with a standing statute and a credible fine can extract a settled number in months, while a court enforcing a decade-old injunction is still haggling over percentage points years later. That is a genuine efficiency case for structured platform regulation, and open-market advocates pushing bills like the Open App Markets Act are right that court-by-court litigation is a slow and uneven substitute for a general rule.
But the EU's win is narrower than it looks. Apple's EU rate card is still tiered — 26% standard, 20% for alternative in-app payment, 15% for web links, 5% for marketplace transactions — and the new marketplace eligibility criteria (Dun & Bradstreet scoring, a $1 million letter of credit, or a million annual installs) simply substitute one gatekeeping test for another. Negotiated compliance beat litigated compliance on speed, not on eliminating discretion. The right lesson for Washington isn't to copy the DMA's institutional machinery wholesale; it's to recognize that even a modest, credible statutory backstop — rather than reliance on decade-long antitrust litigation — would have gotten American developers a settled rate years sooner than a contempt docket has.
The DMA didn't eliminate Apple's control over its terms — it just gave Brussels enough leverage to negotiate them down faster than a US court could order it.