Apple allows users to delete its most valuable app, the App Store

Apple will allow iPhone and iPad owners to delete one of its most valuable and valuable offerings, the iOS App Store, by the end of this year. This change will bring Apple into compliance with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and create more competition in the mobile ecosystem. This will only be possible within the EU.

Other apps that Apple allows users to delete include Messages, Photos, Camera, and Safari.

Currently, these apps cannot be deleted from an iPhone or iPad.

“By the end of this year, we will be making changes to the browser selection screen, default apps, and app deletion for iOS and iPadOS for users in the EU,” Apple quietly announced in a developer update. “These updates are the result of our ongoing and continued dialogue with the European Commission on compliance with the Digital Market Act requirements in these areas.”

Allowing users to delete the official App Store is a huge step. Through the App Store, Apple manages which apps appear on iPhone and iPad based on its app submission guidelines. Apps downloaded through the App Store typically have to use payment services provided by Apple for in-app purchases, which generates significant, high-margin revenue for Apple. A third-party app store reduces Apple’s influence over customers, revenue, and their overall phone or tablet experience, and raises new privacy and security concerns.

In addition to the App Store selection, Apple will create a new browser selection screen for users in the EU.

This also has enormous financial implications: Google pays Apple $18 to $20 billion annually to be the default search engine on Apple’s mobile devices.

Europeans will soon be able to choose between twelve different browsers.

Google’s well-known Chrome browser is on the list, along with Apple’s own Safari, but also lesser-known apps such as Opera, Microsoft’s Edge, SuSea’s You, Mozilla’s Firefox, DuckDuckGo from privacy-focused web search firm Brave and “Browser” from Maple Media Apps. Browsers that have been installed more than 5,000 times in all EU app stores in the last year are allowed to appear on the screen.

The biggest news, however, is that Apple is allowing the deletion of the App Store, which is currently the only truly viable way to get new applications onto an iPhone or iPad.

There are a few new competitors in the App Store that are in various stages of development and use. None of them yet come close to the performance or range of apps in the official App Store:

• Aptoide
• AltStore
• Mobilvention
• Hardware store
• TrollShop
• AppValley

The challenge with the way Apple has set up third-party app stores as part of its Digital Markets Act compliance strategy is that developers who opt out of the traditional Apple App Store must pay a core technology fee for the privilege of running the app on iOS, which could easily cost the apps hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Each download from AltStore and Mobivention costs their developers 50 cents – a fee that could quickly become prohibitive,” says Callum Booth of The Verge.

In fact, Apple’s compliance program makes it almost impossible to do profitable business through a third-party app store. The EU is currently investigating this.

In addition to the choice of app stores, Europeans also have the choice between other apps.

“In future software updates, users will receive new default settings for dialing phone numbers, sending messages, translating text, navigating, managing passwords, keyboards, and call spam filters,” Apple says.