Meta wants to turn Facebook into an App Store replacement, at least in the EU

June 30, 2023

3 min read

The European Union’s parliament has passed the Digital Markets Act, which is antitrust legislation that will force every platform to allow the distribution of apps through other digital stores – which will have a huge impact on Apple. And one of the companies most interested in this change is Meta, which has confirmed its plans to turn Facebook into a replacement for the App Store.

Facebook to become an app store

As reported by The Verge, a Meta spokesperson revealed that the company is “interested in helping developers distribute their apps” through the Facebook app. The idea is to allow users to discover and download apps directly from Facebook rather than having to open the App Store on iOS or the Google Play Store on Android.

This would open up a new market for Meta, which has been struggling ever since Apple introduced new measures to make it harder for apps to track users. Since most of the company’s revenue comes from advertisements, Meta’s business model has been hugely impacted.

Facebook Ads already lets advertisers promote apps, but users must be redirected to the respective app stores for each operating system. By offering the apps directly from Facebook, Meta believes that more people will end up downloading these apps, which should bring positive results for both developers and the platform itself.

Apple is yet to announce sideloading in iOS, so we’re still not sure how this will work. Android, on the other hand, already has sideloading – but apps distributed through the Play Store still have to follow many rules. Presumably Facebook will only be able to distribute apps through an alternative version of its main app available outside the app stores.

To make its new platform even more appealing compared to the App Store and Google Play, Meta says it won’t take a cut from the sales of participating apps, at least not at first.

Digital Markets Act

The new law is expected to be enforced by spring 2024. Once this happens, Apple will be forced to allow developers to distribute their apps outside of the App Store on iOS. This also implies that developers will be able to create their own app stores for iPhone and iPad, which is something that not only Meta but also Microsoft wants to do.

DMA also rules that companies can’t force developers to use their own payment systems, since both Apple and Google require this from developers distributing apps through the App Store and Google Play.

There were rumors that Apple would enable sideloading with iOS 17, but nothing has been announced so far. It’s not hard to imagine that Apple will wait until the last minute to roll out these changes. At the same time, it doesn’t seem likely that sideloading will be available in countries that are not part of the European Union.

Apple’s senior vice president of software Craig Federighi recently said in an interview that Apple will comply with the European Union in its decisions.