Australian iPhones will get rival app stores, and Apple can’t take a cut

Apple has been ordered to let iPhone owners in Australia install apps from rival app stores and straight from developers’ websites, and to do it without charging developers a fee for using those channels. Justice Jonathan Beach of the Federal Court of Australia also ordered Apple to let developers inside the App Store use their own payment systems and link customers to cheaper prices. For anyone with an Australian Apple Account, the iPhone is about to work much more like a Mac.

The change for users is about price and choice. A developer who sells subscriptions or in-game currency through its own store or website would keep that money instead of paying Apple’s service fee, and could pass the saving on. Apple also cannot punish a developer in the App Store for offering a lower price somewhere else, or for distributing its app outside the store. Stores that already run on iPhones in the European Union, including Epic’s own Epic Games Store, are the obvious first candidates.

Apple’s service fee reaches 30% on many App Store sales of digital goods. The orders go further than the rules Apple follows in Europe and Japan, and the judge wrote them that way on purpose. In the European Union, where the Digital Markets Act forced Apple to allow other app stores, Apple introduced a Core Technology Fee of 50 euro cents per first annual install. Justice Beach found that this fee and the rules around it were designed to dissuade developers from using alternatives. The Australian orders ban fees and conditions for access to alternative channels, and they ban any fee on purchases made in apps distributed outside the App Store.

Japan’s version is off the table too. There, a company that wants to run an iPhone app store needs Apple’s authorisation and either a US$1 million standby letter of credit or an app with more than a million first annual installs worldwide. The judge cited that as evidence that, “absent legal restraint, Apple is likely to impose additional conditions on alternative distribution channels that are apt to hinder new entry.” Apple also cannot require Australian developers to show its own in-app purchase button next to theirs, as it does in Japan, or to report those outside sales to Apple.

Apple keeps a security role, but a limited one. Apps distributed outside the App Store must still pass an automated scan for genuine security or privacy reasons and be notarised by Apple or “a suitably qualified third party.” Apple can add “necessary and proportionate” security requirements for outside payment systems, but only after explaining the risk to developers in writing. It can still remove malware. The judge said Apple cannot use its ability to revoke app signatures as “a renewed mechanism of foreclosure” against apps from other sources.

The ruling has limits. It covers Apple Accounts set to Australia and nothing else, because Justice Beach turned down Epic Games’ request to make the orders apply worldwide. Users anywhere else, including the United States, will see no change from it. Apple plans to fight the orders, and nobody yet knows whether rival stores will think a market of Australia’s size is worth building for. Consumers should not expect refunds either. In a separate class action decided the same day, the judge refused to declare that any particular developer or app user had been overcharged, leaving that question for later hearings.

One order takes effect immediately, and it is about Epic. Apple must readmit Fortnite and Epic’s other apps to the Australian App Store once Epic applies. Epic said “Fortnite is coming back to the App Store in Australia tomorrow” and called the decision “great news for developers worldwide and iOS users in Australia.” Apple must also pay 85% of Epic’s legal costs from the liability trial.

The orders on app stores and payments take effect at noon Melbourne time on 1 March 2027. Apple can apply between 1 and 15 February 2027 to push that date to 3 May 2027. The relief judgment, handed down on 22 October 2026, follows Justice Beach’s 2025 finding that Apple misused its market power in breach of section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act. Epic’s parallel case against Google was dismissed after a settlement in March 2026.

Apple told Reuters it “will request a stay and appeal the outcome to seek a resolution that respects our intellectual property and protects the safe, secure experience that consumers and developers expect from the App Store.” If that request fails, an Australian developer will be able to put an iPhone app in front of customers next March without paying Apple anything for the route, a route Apple still charges for in Europe.

Tags: Folarin Balogun, Apple, Australia, iPhone, App Store, epic games, fortnite