App Store anti-steering ban would be consumer-friendly, with little risk to Apple

We learned yesterday that the European Union looks set to impose an App Store anti-steering ban on Apple. That is, Apple would no longer be allowed to prevent Spotify and other music services from linking to their own company’s website for subscription sign-ups.

The ruling we’re expecting is a narrow one, in response to a complaint filed by Spotify almost four years ago now, and will likely only apply to streaming music services. But the principle is a sound one, and is unlikely to pose any great risk to Apple …

What is anti-steering?

The Spotify app is a very good example of the principle. If you download the app and then decide you want to upgrade from a free account to a paid one, you’ll find there’s no way to do so within the app. Not only that, but the app doesn’t even tell you how you can subscribe. There’s no link to Spotify’s website, for example.

App Store rules are the reason for this. Apple says that if you let people take out paid subscriptions within your iPhone app, then you must do so through Apple. The Cupertino company then takes its 15% or 30% cut.

The rules are so strict that the app can’t even direct you – or steer you, in legal terminology – to the developer’s website in order to subscribe. Forbidding developers to steer users to another place to make purchases is known as an anti-steering rule.

Anti-steering creates a bad experience for users

This anti-steering rule creates a poor user experience. It’s just frustrating to a consumer that they want to subscribe, but the app can’t tell them how to do it.

It’s the same in the Kindle app. You finish reading one book in a series, but you can’t buy the next one within the app, and Amazon isn’t even allowed to provide a link. Instead, you have to exit the app, open Safari, visit the Amazon website, search for the book you want, then go back into the Kindle app to read it. That’s a terrible user experience.

It’s particularly unfair in cases where Apple is competing with the third-party developer, as it does in both these cases, through Apple Music and Apple Books respectively. Apple is giving its own apps a huge unfair advantage over competing ones, and making users suffer if they happen to prefer a competing app.

This change wouldn’t much hurt Apple

It’s not like Apple would lose any money if the Spotify and Kindle apps were allowed to provide links to buy subscriptions or books; the company doesn’t receive a penny from either right now.

There are other categories where it could be argued that Apple might lose money. If games companies were able to sell games subscriptions, that might mean some lost sales for Apple Arcade. But again, the consumer interest should trump Apple’s financial interest – and if Apple has to compete on a level playing field, that should spur it to offer the best games.

Even competing app stores would have limited impact

The ultimate extension of this anti-steering ban would be to allow anyone to create their own iOS app store. We’re expecting this to be required in the EU, and Apple is already preparing for it.

But as we’ve argued before, there are two reasons why even this doesn’t represent any kind of existential threat to Apple.

First, the average nontechy Apple customer is going to choose Apple every time. Offer them an Apple app store and an Epic Games app store, and the vast, vast majority are going to choose the Apple one.

Second, even techy people are mostly going to stick to Apple. One of the main reasons I buy Apple kit is because I actively like and appreciate the Apple ecosystem. I like the way everything is integrated because there’s one company running it all. So even people who consider the alternatives and examine what they have to offer will still mostly stick to Apple’s offerings.

And this is true of all the company’s antitrust issues, as we’ve again argued.

The vast majority of people aren’t going to repair their own devices, use RCS, use a competitor to Apple Wallet – or buy apps from a competing app store.

Essentially Apple has been having these huge battles, generating poor user experiences and unfavorable PR, over things whose cost is likely to be little more than a rounding error for the multi-trillion dollar company.

Assuming this decision is handed down as expected, I hope that Apple will accept it gracefully, and move on. How about you?

Photo: Jean-Philippe Delberghe/Unsplash

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