06-reference

stratechery apple eu app store settlement

2026-08-19·reference·source: Stratechery·by Ben Thompson
stratecheryappleapp-storeantitrusteu-dmaregulationios

"Apple Settles With E.U., U.S. App Store Fees, ATT Rules in Germany" — @BenThompson

Why this is in the vault

Apple's App Store commission structure just moved on three fronts simultaneously (EU settlement, U.S. court filing, German ATT ruling) — the first time actual numbers are on the table globally instead of years of litigation posturing, and the new EU/U.S. rate cards are directly relevant to Squarely's App Store unit economics.

The core argument

Three linked regulatory developments in one short-form Update, tied together by the theme "Apple's App Store fee wall is finally coming down, and the EU forced the issue years before the U.S. courts did."

Apple Settles With E.U. Apple agreed to drop its per-install Core Technology Fee for developers who distribute outside the App Store, replacing it with a flat 5% commission on external transactions. New EU rate card: 26% commission for apps using Apple's in-app payments (15% for subscription renewals past year one, down from 30%); 20% for apps using their own payment processor; 15% for apps that link out to the web for payment; 5% for apps distributed entirely outside the App Store. Thompson backs out implied component values from the new numbers: App Store distribution ≈10% of revenue, Apple's APIs ≈5%, in-app payment APIs ≈5%, and payment processing itself ≈6% — close to the fully-loaded cost of card-network fees, meaning the European Commission effectively decided Apple shouldn't profit from processing money, only from the platform and APIs it built. Thompson's read: the real concession wasn't the fee cut, it's that Apple still collects 5% on apps distributed outside the App Store at all, a principle adjacent to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) — Apple's IP isn't free even off-platform — that Apple likely valued more than the marginal revenue.

U.S. App Store Fees. In an Epic v. Apple district-court filing (forced after the Supreme Court declined to pause proceedings pending its own contempt ruling), Apple proposed a 15% standard commission, 5% for small-business-program developers, 10% for Video/News/Mini-Apps Partner Program developers, and 10% on subscription renewals. Thompson notes the "15% for being in the App Store" figure lines up with the EU's implied 10%+5% API split — not a coincidence, in his view, but evidence Apple is finally normalizing its global rate card downward rather than fighting jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Apple's own Q-filing language acknowledged it "may not earn a commission at all" on external-payment purchases, and cited data (Sensor Tower: U.S. App Store consumer spend fell 6% in Q2 vs. +9% growth a year earlier; Appfigures: Apple's U.S. commission revenue down 18% YoY) as the services-margin hit becoming visible in the P&L. Thompson flags the causality is under-argued — the alternative explanation (users spending time on free short-form video/games/AI instead of paid apps) isn't ruled out.

ATT Rules in Germany. Germany's Bundeskartellamt closed a four-year investigation into Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework, finding Apple's own apps got more favorable, consent-encouraging prompts than the discouraging, repetitive-consent prompts imposed on third-party developers. Apple committed to neutral wording/design across both, plus giving publishers more room to explain ad-personalization value to users before the consent prompt. Thompson — a long-time ATT critic — calls this "absolutely the right call," reiterating his 2022 argument that ATT-as-implemented was one of the most anti-competitive acts in recent tech history.

No sponsor block in this issue. Self-promotion limited to a plug for Thompson's own Invest Like the Best appearance and an Asianometry video recommendation (Jon at Asianometry runs Stratechery Plus's Asianometry podcast feed) — both house-network cross-promotion, not paid.

Mapping against Ray Data Co

Squarely distributes through the App Store, so the new EU/U.S. rate cards are a direct unit-economics input, not abstract policy news. If Squarely qualifies for the small-business program (5% EU / 5% U.S.) or subscription-renewal tiers (15% EU / 10% U.S.), that's a material margin change versus the legacy 30%/15% structure baked into 01-projects/squarely-puzzles/growth-strategy.md's existing assumptions. Those assumptions are worth re-checking against the new numbers before the next Squarely pricing pass. More broadly, this is the clearest evidence yet that regulatory pressure — the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) and U.S. antitrust litigation, moving in parallel and converging on similar numbers — is compressing platform-tax economics globally. That's the same structural tailwind RDCO's agent-economy thesis leans on: distribution and payment-processing rents get squeezed as regulators normalize "platform value" pricing.

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