The encyclopedia · Legal & Compliance · Legal decision · 2024–2025
Apple fined €500M for stopping developers from pointing users to cheaper offers
The EU's first DMA fine landed on Apple: its App Store rules stopped developers from steering users to cheaper offers, and the Commission called it illegal.
Apple · 2025-04-23
What happened
On 23 April 2025 the European Commission fined Apple €500 million under the Digital Markets Act — the first fine issued under the DMA. The breach was the anti-steering obligation: developers must be able to tell users about cheaper offers outside the App Store, steer them there, and let them buy.
Apple had instead imposed technical and commercial restrictions on developers who wanted to use alternative distribution channels. The Commission found those restrictions prevented developers from fully benefiting from other channels and prevented consumers from reaching cheaper offers — and that Apple failed to show the restrictions were objectively necessary and proportionate.
Apple was given 60 days to comply or face periodic penalty payments; repeat breaches can draw fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover. Apple responded that it was being unfairly targeted, accused the Commission of moving the goalposts, and said the decision forced it to give away its technology for free.
Why it happened
- A platform paid on in-store transactions has a structural incentive to keep prices inside the store — the rule exists because the platform will not build its own bypass.
- When a regulation mandates an outcome but leaves the design to the regulated company, the implementation is written to protect revenue. The Commission ruled that is what happened here.
- The fine scales with revenue and repeats daily until compliance, so the real cost of resisting a regulator is delay, not the first bill.
The lesson
When a regulator mandates an outcome, the design of compliance is still yours — and designing it to preserve revenue is itself the breach. Build the compliant path to work, not merely to exist.
Sources
- Commission finds Apple and Meta in breach of the Digital Markets Act — European Commission
- EU hits Apple and Meta with €700m of fines — BBC News
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