Developers interested in distributing iOS apps on their websites also have to cross a high bar. This includes being registered or incorporated in the EU, being a member of “good standing in the Apple Developer Program for two continuous years or more,” and having an app that received “more than one million first annual installs on iOS in the EU in the prior calendar year.”
Apple will also vet the apps, which must receive official “notarization” from the company, before they can distributed on third-party platforms.
Developers must pay a 17% or 10% commission, and fork over “€0.50 for each first annual install” if their app crosses one million total installs over a 12-month period.
Critics have since slammed the new fee structure, calling it anticompetitive. “This is extortion, plain and simple,” Spotify said in January. “For any developer wondering if this might work for you, you need to have less than a million customers and essentially sign up for not growing in the long run.”
I really hope the EU doesn’t find this “compliance” good enough - it’s absolutely not free sideloading of apps like on Android, or any PC ever. It’s pretty much the App Store, but with a smaller fee for a while and with Apple wasting less money on server costs.
I’m sure they don’t. Had they just gone with the “we can block your app for security reasons and want to see it first”, they might have. But requiring long term active developer accounts (which has a yearly fee), preapproval, commission, payment per download etc, that isn’t allowing sideloading at all, it’s just an Apple app store in a trenchcoat.