Apple EU App Store changes cut commissions to 5% for external sales

The shift from a flat fee to a percentage-based Core Technology Commission provides immediate cost relief for smaller developers while maintaining a revenue stream for Apple on external transactions. By standardizing tracking prompts, the German Federal Cartel Office is forcing a level playing field between Apple’s first-party services and third-party streaming apps that rely on targeted advertising. This regulatory settlement signals that the European Commission will continue to iterate on the Digital Markets Act to prevent technical workarounds. Watch for the Coalition for App Fairness, led by Spotify and Epic Games, to challenge whether these commission tiers truly meet the legal requirement for open digital markets.

The Coalition for App Fairness, whose founding members include Spotify and Epic Games, has been the most vocal critic of Apple's compliance efforts under the Digital Markets Act. In March 2025, Spotify filed a formal complaint with the European Commission alleging that Apple's revised App Store terms still violated DMA obligations by maintaining what the company called anti-steering restrictions that prevented developers from directing users to cheaper external payment options. That complaint preceded the European Commission's preliminary findings in April 2025, which concluded Apple's previous fee structure was non-compliant and set the stage for the August 2026 policy overhaul. Epic Games, meanwhile, has used its own Epic Games Store launch on iOS in the EU as a live test case for alternative app distribution, and CEO Tim Sweeney publicly stated in June 2025 that Apple's initial DMA compliance terms were designed to make sideloading economically unviable for most developers.

On the regulatory side, Germany's Federal Cartel Office has taken a more aggressive posture than most national competition authorities. In April 2025, the Bundeskartellamt opened a formal proceeding against Apple over its App Tracking Transparency implementation, finding that the prompt design disadvantaged third-party advertisers while exempting Apple's own ad products. Andreas Mundt, the office's president, stated that the investigation focused on whether Apple was using its gatekeeper position to distort the digital advertising market. The European Commission separately imposed a €1.84 billion fine on Apple in March 2024 for anti-steering violations in the music streaming market, a penalty that directly benefited Spotify as the complainant. These enforcement actions collectively created the regulatory pressure that forced Apple's August 2026 concessions.

For streaming platforms and ad-supported services, the technical implications of the neutral tracking prompt requirement are significant. Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework has been credited with reducing iOS ad personalization rates dramatically since its 2021 introduction, and a 2024 study by AppsFlyer found that opt-in rates for ad tracking on iOS had fallen below 20% globally, severely limiting the ability of streaming apps to monetize through targeted advertising. The mandate for neutral prompts, which must present tracking choices without Apple's previous discouraging language, could raise opt-in rates and partially restore the addressable advertising inventory that services like Spotify, Hulu, and Peacock depend on for their ad-supported tiers. Developers will need to monitor whether the revised prompt design produces measurable changes in user consent behavior once the October 1 deadline takes effect.