Apple will allow iPhone app downloads on the web in the EU–but there’s a catch

With Apple’s famous walled garden continuing to crumble, the company has made yet another concession to app developers. But it turns out that not everyone will benefit.

For more than 15 years, Apple insisted that apps could only be downloaded to the iPhone (and later iPad) from its own App Store, claiming this was necessary to ensure customers didn’t accidentally install malware and scam software. (In practice, you could jailbreak an iPhone or iPad and download apps from other places, but the average user wouldn’t be willing to do this.) That, however, is changing, at least in Europe, because the EU’s Digital Markets Act forced Apple to support alternative app stores as of iOS 17.4.

In fact, Apple announced this week that developers will be able to skip the app store stage altogether and distribute apps directly to EU users from their websites. This option hasn’t become available yet, but it shouldn’t be long: Apple says it will roll out in a software update later this spring.

“Web Distribution,” the company says, “will let authorized developers distribute their iOS apps to EU users directly from a website owned by the developer. Apple will provide authorized developers access to APIs that facilitate the distribution of their apps from the web, integrate with system functionality, back up and restore users’ apps, and more.”

The sting in the tail is that only a very small proportion of devs will qualify for this new privilege. Principally, they will need to be sufficiently large. As Apple explains in its guide to Web Distribution, this is defined as having “an app that had more than one million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.” You also need to be registered in the EU (or have a subsidiary in the EU), and to have been “a member of good standing in the Apple Developer Program” for two continuous years… which amusingly seems to rule out Epic Games, as Ars Technica points out.

Affecting such a small number of devs (Ars Technica quotes Apple as saying that the annual installs threshold alone will limit it to less than one percent) this might not seem like a big deal; and it’s further true that most users will continue to use the officially sanctioned installation process, not least because Apple is sure to tell them that it is the safest way to get apps. But the concessions are important because they reduce Apple’s power to dictate terms. It will know that raising App Store fees too high, or making App Store rules too stringent, will push more developers into alternative distribution methods. And perhaps it will be motivated to make the App Store experience more user-friendly (cough App Store search ads cough) to encourage users to keep using it.

In other words, this should be a good thing, even for those who don’t end up availing themselves of the option. Although Apple probably wouldn’t agree.