Apple-funded study slams EU's Digital Markets Act, says fee savings not passed on

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A study funded by Apple (AAPL [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/AAPL]) slammed the European Union's Digital Markets Act on Wednesday, as the research claims reduced feeds for developers in the region are not being passed on to users as savings.

“Despite commission rates typically falling by about 10 percentage points, current evidence shows that developers kept the prices of what they sold through the App Store the same or increased them more than 90% of the time,” Analysis Group vice president Jane Choi wrote in the study [https://developer.apple.com/download/files/DMA-Study-Nov-2025.pdf]. “This is true regardless of whether developers paid a Core Technology Fee to Apple.”

In addition, Choi said that even when developers cut their prices after enrolling in the small business program — which only happened for approximately 9% of prices in EU storefronts —they did so in a way “consistent” with usual patterns in price changes.

“This suggests that the bulk of the observed price decreases are unrelated to the reduction in fees from the alternative business terms,” Choi added.

“Developers’ decision not to pass on commission savings to EU users mirrors Apple’s past experiences following the launch of multiple initiatives that reduced commission rates,” Choi continued. The company cited an example that when Apple reduced the rates for tens of thousands of developers in the U.S., only a “small minority” cut the price of their apps.

Apple allow developers in the E.U. to distribute their apps outside the App Store and let them not rely on Apple's in-app payment system. That cut the commission Apple took from 30% to around 20%.

More than 41M transactions were analyzed for the study, which also looked at roughly 21,000 unique in-app purchases and paid apps. Roughly €20.1M in commissions were saved, the study added.

The E.U. and the European Commission, the bloc's antitrust enforcement agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.

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