On 1 October 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that Google has begun allowing rival, third-party app stores to be distributed through the Google Play Store. EFF also said developers have greater freedom to direct users to alternative payment and distribution options. The change follows the Epic Games v. Google litigation, and it applies in the United States only. Android users and developers in the UAE do not get it. That gap says something about how app-store competition is created: it comes from litigation and statute in a few large jurisdictions, and everywhere else it is inherited or not inherited by accident.
What the US order actually did
The Ninth Circuit affirmed the jury verdict and the permanent injunction against Google on 31 July 2025. The jury had found that Google unlawfully maintained monopoly power in Android app distribution and in-app billing. The injunction runs for three years. It requires Google to let rival stores access the Play Store's app catalog and to distribute through the Play Store, subject to reasonable security measures. The court also upheld a provision requiring a reasonable, cost-based fee for rival stores that use Play infrastructure. The appellate opinion is public. The remedy is therefore specific, time-limited and tied to a trial record, not a general rule.
The strongest case for regulating UAE app stores now
The argument for acting deserves a fair statement. A developer in Dubai or Abu Dhabi serves a market where the dominant Android store may impose billing and distribution terms that the US court found anticompetitive. UAE developers have no court order to rely on, and no ex ante rule to point to. Users get fewer choices of store and developers get fewer routes to reach them without paying the incumbent's terms. If the harm is real in the US, a regulator could say, it is plausibly real in the UAE too. And waiting for Google to extend US terms voluntarily is a bet on corporate goodwill.
What the UAE does have
The UAE is not a competition-law vacuum. Federal Decree-Law No. 36 of 2023 replaced the 2012 law and, according to K&L Gates, prohibits abuse of dominance in a way that mirrors Article 102 TFEU. Dominance exists where an undertaking exceeds the market-share threshold set by the Cabinet, currently 40% under Cabinet Resolution No. 13 of 2016. It can also exist where an undertaking can influence the market in a way that harms competition, a concept the executive regulations are meant to define. The listed examples of abuse include unjustifiable discrimination between customers, preventing customers from dealing with competitors, and refusing to deal without justification. Those are the same family of conduct the Epic case addressed.
So a UAE developer could in principle complain to the Ministry of Economy. In practice, case-by-case enforcement against a global platform is slow. It needs a defined relevant market, evidence gathered locally, and a remedy the regulator is willing to impose on a company that sets terms globally. K&L Gates notes that the dominance test depends on executive regulations still to be defined, and in our research we found no UAE app-store-specific rule or published enforcement action against Play terms.
Why a European-style rulebook is the wrong import
The obvious alternative is the EU model. The Digital Markets Act, which the European Commission describes as the EU's law to make digital markets fairer and more contestable, designates gatekeepers and imposes obligations and prohibitions on their core platform services, app stores among them. It became applicable on 2 May 2023. It is a powerful instrument, but it presupposes a large regulator, a designation process, and a market big enough to make a gatekeeper comply by default. The UAE has none of those at that scale, and a copied rulebook without enforcement capacity would add compliance language without changing outcomes.
The US experience offers a better lesson for a market the size of the UAE: the remedy that worked was narrow. Catalog access, store distribution, a cost-based fee and a three-year term are measurable, reviewable and sunsetted. A proportionate UAE response would borrow that logic instead of the DMA's breadth.
A proportionate path for UAE regulators
First, the Ministry of Economy should publish the executive regulations that define the 'ability to influence the market' test, and say explicitly whether platform intermediaries fall within it. Uncertainty about the test, not the absence of a statute, is the main obstacle for developers deciding whether a complaint is worth filing.
Second, the ministry should open a fact-finding inquiry into mobile app distribution before choosing any remedy. The question is empirical: do UAE developers face the same billing and distribution constraints, and are UAE users actually denied store choice? An inquiry can answer that without prejudging the outcome or chilling investment in the UAE's growing app economy.
Third, if the inquiry finds harm, prefer targeted, time-limited commitments to a standing licensing-style regime. Commitments can be negotiated with the platform, tested against security concerns, and unwound if they fail. That serves innovation better than a permanent obligation drafted before the facts are known.
Fourth, developers should not wait. Because Google's US change is already built, the cost of extending it elsewhere is a business decision more than an engineering one. UAE developers and industry groups can press the case directly with the platform, citing the US precedent and the local statute.
The bottom line
The lesson of 1 October is not that the UAE needs an app-store law tomorrow. It is that competition rights in digital markets are currently allocated by the location of the lawsuit. A market that wants developers to build for its users should not leave that allocation to chance. The UAE already has the legal hook in its abuse-of-dominance provision. What it lacks is a published test, an evidence base and a willingness to use them. Supplying those would give local developers a credible path to the same options US developers now have, without importing a regulatory model built for a much larger and differently structured market.