As Apple’s famous walled garden continues to crumble, the company has made a new concession to app developers. But it turns out not everyone will benefit.
For more than 15 years, Apple insisted that apps could only be downloaded to the iPhone (and later iPad) from its own App Store, saying this was necessary to ensure that customers weren’t accidentally installing malware or fraudulent software. (In practice, you could jailbreak an iPhone or iPad and download apps from other places, but the average user would not be willing to do that.) However, this is chang ing, at least in Europe, because the EU Digital Markets Act forced Apple to support alternative app stores starting with iOS 17.4.
In fact, Apple announced this week that developers could skip the App Store step altogether and distribute apps directly to EU users from their websites. This option isn’t available yet, but it shouldn’t be long: Apple says it will be rolled out in a software update later this spring.
“Web Distribution,” the company says, “will allow authorized developers to distribute their iOS apps to users in the EU directly from a developer-owned website.” Apple will provide authorized developers with access to APIs that make it easy to distribute their apps from the web, integrate with system features, back up and restore user apps, and more.
The problem is that only a very small proportion of developers will be eligible for this new privilege. They will mainly have to be large enough. As Apple explains in its web distribution guide, this is defined as having “an app that has had more than 1 million annual first-time installs on iOS in the EU in the previous calendar year.” You also need to be registered in the EU (or have an EU subsidiary) and have been a “member in good standing of the Apple Developer Program” for two consecutive years… which seems to amusingly exclude Epic Games, because Ars Technica underlines it.
Affecting such a small number of developers (Ars Technica cites Apple as saying the annual install threshold alone will limit it to less than 1%), this may not seem like a big deal; and it’s also true that most users will continue to use the officially sanctioned installation process, not least because Apple will definitely tell them that it’s the safest way to get apps. But these concessions are important because they reduce Apple’s power to dictate terms. He will know that raising App Store fees too high or making App Store rules too strict will push more developers toward alternative distribution methods. And perhaps he’ll be motivated to make the App Store experience more user-friendly (cough App Store search ads cough) to encourage users to continue using it.
In other words, this should be a good thing even for those who don’t take advantage of this option. Although Apple probably wouldn’t agree.
