EU ‘welcomes’ Apple steps to comply with digital rules

The European Commission announced Tuesday that Apple has agreed to revise App Store terms for iPhone and iPad developers, letting them steer users to third-party stores, the web, or alternative payment systems, after the bloc fined Apple 500 million euros in April 2025 for violating the Digital Markets Act.

The commission says the changes, including simplified fees and travel-proof access to alternative app channels, will roll out starting October 2026, and that it currently isn't pursuing the daily penalty payments — which could have exceeded 50 million euros a day — while it monitors compliance instead.

Apple, which is appealing the original fine and just lost a separate legal challenge to the DMA's application to iOS, issued its own statement framing the changes as resolving its 'disagreements' with Brussels, even as it maintains it only made them under threat of massive fines. The Trump administration, meanwhile, continues to call the EU's digital rules a trade barrier, while U.S. tech executives increasingly side with Washington over Brussels.

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