A lot of things have changed in the App Store over the last year. For instance, the company had to allow sideloading in the EU, while it also changed its guidelines to let developers link to external payment methods – as long as they still pay Apple a commission. But according to Apple Fellow Phil Schiller, he raised concerns about this idea at the time.
Schiller didn’t want to charge commission for external purchases on iOS
Schiller, who still heads the App Store, testified in court on Monday in the case of Epic vs. Apple. Interestingly, according to the executive, he was originally against the idea of charging a 27% commission on transactions made outside the App Store when the user was redirected to the transaction website via an iOS app.
As noted by TechCrunch, Schiller believed that the fee would not only be a compliance risk, but would also create an “antagonistic relationship” between Apple and app developers.
Apple had to revise the App Store guidelines as a result of the legal battle with Epic Games in the US. The company was forced to relax its anti-steering rules, which previously prohibited developers from linking alternative payment methods in their apps. Instead, developers could only sell digital items using the App Store’s in-app purchase system.
However, although Apple now allows developers to redirect users to complete a purchase on an external website, the company requires developers to pay a 27% commission for these transactions (versus the 30% commission charged within the App Store).
“I had great concerns about the collections of funds from developers,” Schiller said. He also claimed not to like the idea of changing the “role of the App Store to now an organization that needs to collect money from developers.” According to the Apple Fellow, he didn’t want Apple to become “some kind of a collection agency” that had rules for auditing developers and dealing with non-payments.
Despite what Schiller said, a committee that included Apple CEO Tim Cook, former Apple CFO Luca Maestri, and the company’s legal team along with Schiller, ended up voting in favor of charging a commission for purchases made outside the App Store.
In a post on X, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said that the “testimony had the vibe that Phil didn’t want to do any of this.” Sweeney also pointed to evidence of Tim Cook personally asking the App Store team to add alerts when users tap on a link to be redirected to an external payment method.
After Apple announced that it would charge a commission for external purchases, Epic went back to court to argue that this was an act of bad faith on Apple’s part. The judge in the case ordered Apple to provide all documents relating to the changes made to the App Store.
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