App Store

Apple on Monday was fined €1 million in France by the Paris Commercial Court. The court accused the company of imposing abusive commercial clauses on developers who distribute their apps on the App Store.

In a response to the looming regulations in the European Union, Apple is reportedly working on deep changes to how iOS and the App Store work. According to Bloomberg, the company is even considering allowing alternative app stores on its devices. Now developer Riley Testut, who created AltStore, has shared his thoughts on iOS having official support for third-party app stores.

One of the many antitrust investigations into Apple seems set to mandate alternative app stores, and it was yesterday reported that the Cupertino company is making plans to bow to the inevitable.

While there will be the usual chorus about politicians interfering in the way that companies operate, this change will be a win for all Apple users, even if we have no plans to go anywhere near a third-party app store …

After a lot of pressure from the European Union and other governments around the world, it seems that Apple is for the first time considering making deep changes to iOS and the App Store. According to a Bloomberg report, the company is planning to open up even more iOS functionality to third-party apps, including the browser engine and NFC.

Apple is set to make a monumental change to the App Store on the iPhone. In response to looming regulations in the European Union, Apple has software engineers and services employees working on a project to “allow alternative app stores” on the iPhone and iPad. This change could launch as soon as iOS 17 next year.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is doubling down on his battle against Apple and the App Store. In a new interview with The Verge, Sweeney threatened to take the long-running lawsuit between Epic and Apple to the Supreme Court, while saying that “every politician should fear the rise of corporate power that Apple is creating.”

Apple is making good on one of its recent promises to developers. Starting today, App Store developers now have over 700 different new price points from which to choose for their apps. This brings the total number of price point options to 900, with options ranging from as low as $0.29 all the way up to $10,000.

Apple this week announced that it will continue to accept app submissions to the App Store through the holiday season. While in the past the company used to suspend app submissions for a short period of time in December, this will no longer happen – at least not this year.

Apple has announced its 2022 App Store Award recipients today, and this year’s list of winners all stand out for demonstrating “abundant possibilities” through the App Store and across Apple devices. The trendy social app BeReal takes the top prize on the iPhone for 2022. Apple also features the best iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch apps of the year alongside game winners.

Apple’s ad business generated around $4B in the company’s last fiscal year. That’s a lot of money, of course, but I think there’s a risk that ad sales are doing more than $4B’s worth of damage to the company.

Let’s start by putting that number into context. By most standards, it’s a huge sum of money. It’s as much as AstraZeneca made from a year’s worth of COVID-19 vaccines, for example. But for Apple, it represents around 1% of its annual revenue for the year …

A potentially sensitive US Army iOS app is among thousands of iOS and Android apps to include user-profiling code from a Russian company that pretended to be an American one – raising both privacy and security concerns.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also used the code in seven of its apps. Both organizations have now removed the code, but it remains present in thousands of other apps …

Apple has always stood for privacy as a “human right” while the company has never liked the idea of having advertisements on its platforms. But as the App Store is now getting new ad placements, some people have become concerned about how the company’s policies may change. To add more fuel to the fire, developers have discovered that Apple may keep track of everything you tap while browsing the App Store.

After the EU passed the Digital Markets Act this past summer, the new legislation has officially gone into effect at the start of November. While we’ve previously heard of the potential consequences, an EU official has reiterated that we could see Apple forced to open up iPhone to third-party app stores and more.

Facebook and Instagram boosts are a popular way for creators to give their posts extra reach by paying Meta to show them to more people. Apple has updated its App Store rules to say that any boosts purchased through the iOS apps must use in-app purchases (IAP), giving the iPhone maker a 30% cut.

Meta has called this an Apple tax on ads, and says that the Cupertino company is growing its own ad business while undercutting competitors …

If you prefer your app recommendations to be served by the highest bidder, then you’re in luck. Apple has enabled Search Ads to appear on the front page and related app pages on the App Store.

Following the release of iOS 16.1 and other software updates on Monday, Apple has updated the App Store guidelines to revise some existing rules and add new ones. The updated guidelines now have specific mentions of apps with NFTs, as well as introducing new rules for advertising management apps.

Update: Apple has now restored the apps, and explained the reason – see update at end.

The Russian government’s decision to hold sham referendums in Ukraine has seen Apple pull a number of major apps in response to new sanctions.

Popular Russian apps removed from the App Store worldwide include Mail.ru and Facebook competitor VK. The latter is one of the apps the Russian government previously required Apple to show to iPhone users in the country during the initial setup process …

Update: The names of the apps are now known. Apple has removed them from the App Store, but the apps also need to be removed from devices – see the list added to the end of the piece.

Meta has issued a Facebook security warning to around one million users that their login credentials may have been stolen by scam apps. While most of the apps were Android ones, 47 of them were iOS apps found in Apple’s App Store …

Apple’s App Store revenue fell by 5% year-on-year in September, with games revenue down by 14%, according to Sensor Tower analytics.

Morgan Stanley, which carried out financial modeling based on the data, said that this was the biggest drop seen since it first started tracking, back in 2015. The fall is likely explained by two factors …

Security researchers discovered 85 apps engaged in ad fraud; ten are on the App Store, and the other 75 are on Google Play. Combined, people downloaded them over 13 million times. They’re part of a new ad fraud campaign named “Scylla.”