The serious issue is for apps having more than 1 million installs (YouTube, Zoom, Slack, Outlook, Amazon, etc.). Strong "coincidence": these are the companies you don't want to allow to create alternative stores to, because they have their own payments methods: how long would it take Amazon, Google or Microsoft (the only one without a payment service, AFAIK) to run their brand new "Google/Amazon Store for iOS"? Probably they have it already half baked there waiting to be released.
Now, they will have to either accept to use the App Store "way" (the current way, so all good) or pay huge fees for their own apps. Will they do it? Is it worth it? I am very curious!
Alternative, smaller stores for smaller apps, instead, will be there and should be OK, as long as the apps don't exceed 1 million installs in a year (which is a lot, I guess).
EDIT: I missed Meta Pay, apparently another payment method from one of the companies with the most downloaded apps. Yeah, it seems really that Apple doesn't want other stores from big companies.
The moment any app on "f-droid for iOS" does something that Apple disapproves of, they can revoke its notarization and banish its developer from their walled garden.
And the moment that that do that, they can rack up millions or billions of dollars of fines from the EU.
If your app store distributes malware, it deserves to get banned.
Notarization is literally to check malware and other small things.
You can probably still use private APIs and weird things that wouldn't pass the app review.
> In order to establish adequate financial means to guarantee support for developers and customers, marketplace developers must provide Apple a stand-by letter of credit from an A-rated (or equivalent by S&P, Fitch, or Moody’s) financial Institution of €1,000,000 prior to receiving the entitlement. It will need to be auto-renewed on a yearly basis.
Source: https://developer.apple.com/support/alternative-app-marketpl...
It doesn't seem like the fee waiver removes this requirement.
And it seems like the cost for a standby letter of credit is roughly 1-10% of its value per year? So effectively it costs €10,000 to €100,000 per year just to have an alternate marketplace, separate from the core technology fee....
> If the Core Technology Fee does not apply to Your Applications under this Section 4.4, any Alternative App Marketplace (EU) You distribute may only distribute Applications from You or another developer registered with the Apple Developer Program and not subject to the Core Technology Fee under this Section 4.4.
So a hypothetical F-Droid for iOS would need all its apps to be from registered developers with fee waivers. (And individuals are not eligible for the waiver, so it could only contain apps from other non-profit organizations.)
This is just a farce at this point.
The centre of that Venn diagram is developers for apps on iOS's F-Droid-like, and I think that's a very small subset indeed - especially considering the paperwork required to become a non-profit.
Maybe the store itself will put in the work, but do you honestly believe every dev with an app on F-Droid will put up with the requirement to register as a non-profit?
What about the payment methods? Are these also exempted?
This is just my very preliminary reading of the terms though, I might be wrong and the two might actually be coupled!
However, this is due to the fact that no average company typically has the time/money/interest to run an app store as their side project, except for the big players, which in many cases happen to be the same people producing high volume apps and having payment methods capabilities. You could claim that Telegram or Zoom have no app store and they would never plan to do so, and you'd probably be right, but the BIG or very BIG ones are MS, Google, Amazon and Meta one way or another have already their own app stores. They even mention that "less than 1% of the developers would be affected by the Core Technology Fee". You want to really keep these guys on your app store, because imagine if you didn't find office, zoom, gmail, youtube on the official App Store. That'd be really weird - it reminds me of the microsoft store (on some old windows phone I had the pleasure to setup...) that didn't have some important apps.
To answer the other question - they could be running an app store...:
Why would Google or Valve run a store for lower-volume apps?
Please note that they mention "less than 1% of the developers", not "less than 1% of the apps hosted". It means: google, facebook, ms, epic games, etc. Those are the guys that you will probably never have on the alternative app store (because of the huge fees that they might have to pay).
EDIT: In 2022 there were about 34 million registered developers [0]. 1% is 340'000. This is where the big money is.
[0]: https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/06/apple-now-has-ove...
Epic has had an Android store in the roadmap since the beginning of the EGS. They still seem years out but I imagine this news will accellerate development for that.
They definitely want to "demotivate" big players from running the show. If they do, they'll have to pay huge fees, so it's a big win for Apple.
I don't think any company with a huge market share should be able to do so, so I hope Apple will have to open up at least to the degree Android has done.
