The United States is working on a new legislation called the Open App Markets Act that has a very clear objective: to avoid the monopoly of the App Store and the Play Store , which forces application developers to pay 30% of their income.
Open App Markets Act stands for “Open App Stores Act”, and ultimately tries to reduce the enormous power of Apple and Google . The US Senate is going to vote on a series of regulations that will limit the influence over third-party companies that grant them the iOS and Android mobile operating systems.
The expulsion of Fortnite from the App Store is a clear example of the problem: developers have to pay 30% of the cost of apps, integrated payments and subscriptions to Apple or Google. Many believe that this “digital tax” is excessive and limits competition.
The most important measure is that the Open App Markets Act will make it possible to install apps outside the official store of the operating system . Something that Android allows from the beginning, but to which Apple categorically refuses, citing security risks for users.
Consumers will gain the right to use third-party stores by default , just like default apps. For example, it would open the possibility of the Aurora Store replacing the App Store on iPhone, or removing Safari to set Firefox as the default browser.
In addition, users will be able to remove or hide pre-installed apps , something that manufacturers are gradually facilitating, but it is still somewhat problematic.
On the other hand, developers would gain a series of rights: they would not be obliged to use the Apple or Google payment systems , they could offer better prices in rival stores, and their applications would appear in the search engine of the stores on equal terms with those of the OS.
The new rule would affect app stores with more than 50 million users in the United States , so new competitors that arise will not suffer. It seems that video game stores on consoles will not be included , since the Open App Markets Act covers only “general purpose computing devices”.
Of course, consumers and developers will benefit from the increased competition, and the likely drop in commissions.
The negative part is that the risk of downloading malware from stores would increase , although the law does allow filters to prevent the installation of malicious software.
Critics of the Open App Markets Act see other problems: It could prevent the Play Store or App Store from recommending the highest quality apps, making it harder to find useful content among the millions of apps.
In addition, app store limitations could even mean that poor quality or non-compliant apps are no longer removed, resulting in a worse experience.
For now it is not clear if the Open App Markets Act will pass the US Senate , and there are conflicting positions. Apple and Google are contrary, however, large multinationals such as Microsoft, Spotify or Netflix want the Android and iOS stores to offer hands-on restrictions.
