Dominant
App stores are unbundling under court supervision
he 30% cut shaped mobile game design for 15 years. Its replacement is a supervised patchwork of tiered fees — and gatekeeping has migrated from distribution to attestation.
Where it stands
Courts are unwinding app-store control asymmetrically. Google, having lost on all counts, must carry rival stores inside Play/ Aptoide arrived in August, and a judge ordered install friction stripped within a week. Apple, having won most counts, is re-pricing rather than losing commissions: tiered external-link fees in the US, a flat 5% Core Technology Commission and a 15% steering fee replacing the EU's Core Technology Fee from 18 August 2026, terms eighteen developer groups including the EGDF rejected in September as a breach of the DMA's free-steering article. Enforcement is now continuous. Japan moved by statute rather than by court: the Mobile Software Competition Act took full effect on 18 December 2025, and Apple's Japan changes of the day before opened iOS to rival marketplaces and outside payments, with App Store commissions cut to 10% or 21%.
Further reading
The timeline, consequences and objections for this trend are not written yet. What it is and its reading list are above.