Brazil is quietly becoming one of the most consequential jurisdictions in the global debate over app store competition. The Conselho Administrativo de Defesa Econômica (CADE) — the country's competition authority — continues to push forward with Administrative Process 08700.004806/2022-95 against Apple, the case opened after Mercado Livre's 2022 complaint and later joined by Match Group. Running in parallel, the Chamber of Deputies is still working through PL 2768/2022, a digital markets bill modelled in spirit on the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). Together, these two tracks will shape how a country of more than 200 million internet users approaches mobile platform governance — and they deserve scrutiny on the merits rather than reflexive enthusiasm.
What CADE is actually investigating
The allegations at the heart of the CADE proceeding are familiar to anyone who has followed app store litigation in the US, EU, Japan and South Korea: that Apple's mandatory use of its in-app purchase (IAP) system, its anti-steering rules preventing developers from telling users about cheaper options outside the app, and its prohibition on alternative app stores or sideloading constitute an abuse of dominance in the iOS app distribution and payments market. Mercado Livre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, framed the complaint around the harms to digital goods sellers; Match Group, the dating-app group that has been Apple's most persistent global antagonist on these issues, joined to reinforce it.
In late 2024, CADE's Tribunal escalated the matter by ordering preventive measures requiring Apple to permit alternative payment mechanisms and sideloading within 20 days. Apple swiftly obtained a federal court injunction from the TRF-1 suspending the order, and the substantive proceeding has continued through 2025 and into 2026 on a more deliberate schedule. The injunction is important: it signals that Brazilian courts are not willing to wave through structural remedies on a 20-day clock before a full evidentiary record exists. That is the right instinct.
Where the case has genuine merit
Within the basket of practices CADE is examining, anti-steering rules are the weakest link in Apple's defence. After the US Epic v. Apple litigation, the Northern District of California's permanent injunction against anti-steering provisions, the EU's DMA, Japan's Smartphone Software Competition Promotion Act, and the Korea Communications Commission's enforcement under the 2021 amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act, there is now a clear international consensus that developers should be free to communicate with their own customers about alternative ways to pay. A targeted Brazilian remedy along these lines would be modest, easy to comply with, and very hard to argue against on either consumer-welfare or free-expression grounds.
The IAP-tying question is closer but still defensible from a pro-competition standpoint, particularly for digital goods where the 15–30% commission has no clear cost basis. Here, narrow, evidence-driven remedies — allowing third-party payment processors for digital purchases, with reasonable security and disclosure requirements — fit comfortably within a proportionate framework.
Where caution is warranted
Mandatory sideloading and forced opening of alternative app stores are a different category. These are structural changes to the iOS security model, not pricing disputes. The EU's experience under the DMA since March 2024 has shown both the promise and the friction: Apple has implemented alternative marketplaces and notarisation, but malware and scam apps have already surfaced through those channels, and developers complain that the Core Technology Fee architecture undermines the policy goal. Importing that model wholesale into Brazil — a market with different fraud dynamics, lower average device replacement cycles, and a far thinner ecosystem of trusted third-party reviewers — could deliver costs without the intended consumer-welfare gains.
This is why PL 2768/2022 deserves a careful read rather than a fast-track. Earlier drafts placed gatekeeper-designation authority with ANATEL, the telecoms regulator, before later versions moved it toward CADE. Either way, the bill would import the DMA's ex-ante designation logic into a Brazilian context. The key questions Congress should answer before passage:
- Are designation thresholds (user count, revenue, market position) calibrated to Brazilian market realities, or copy-pasted from European numbers?
- Will obligations be self-executing or subject to dialogue and compliance plans, as the European Commission has been forced to allow in practice?
- Is there an evidentiary requirement linking each obligation to a documented harm in the Brazilian market — rather than a presumed harm imported from Brussels?
A proportionate path
The pro-innovation answer here is not to defend every Apple policy. It is to ask CADE and Congress to act with precision. Anti-steering and a narrow IAP carve-out for digital goods are tractable, internationally validated remedies. Mandatory sideloading is a far larger intervention and should not be ordered on a 20-day clock; the TRF-1's injunction correctly bought time for a real hearing.
PL 2768, if it passes, should be a Brazilian law and not a Portuguese-language DMA. That means market-specific thresholds, evidentiary discipline, and a regulator empowered to negotiate compliance rather than mandate it. Brazil has a strong record on competition enforcement — including against domestic incumbents — and CADE's institutional credibility is one of the country's quiet economic assets. Spending it on a maximalist app-store remedy modelled on a foreign statute would be a strategic mistake. Spending it on a sharp, well-evidenced steering and IAP order would be a textbook case of proportionate regulation done right.