\u201cAnybody can launch a competitive app store now,\u201d Epic chief executive officer Tim Sweeney said in a joint interview with Samat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alphabet doesn\u2019t offer standalone figures for how much revenue is attributable to its Android operating system or the Google Play store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Documents from the US litigation with Epic indicated the technology giant\u2019s app store brought in $14.66 billion in sales in 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Analysts had estimated that changes to its app store required by new regulations and the litigation could result in a $1 billion loss in gross profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March 2025, the European Commission<\/a> chastised Google for allegedly breaching the bloc\u2019s landmark Digital Markets Act<\/a> by preventing app developers from steering consumers to offers outside of its Play Store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The company is expected to face penalties over that alleged breach, with eventual fines as high as 10% of its global annual revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google has already faced \u20ac9.5 billion (R181.93 billion) in fines from the EU over competition law violations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, the company was handed a six-month deadline to lift technical barriers to rival AI search assistants on Android.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the UK, the antitrust watchdog previously designated Google as having Strategic Market Status in the mobile platforms market \u2014 effectively a measure which puts in guardrails for how powerful tech firms behave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the rules, the Competition and Markets Authority can impose conduct requirements on firms that include making it easier for users to download apps and pay for content outside of Google\u2019s own platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last month, Google\u00a0committed\u00a0to making changes to its app store in the UK beginning in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a court filing Wednesday in San Francisco federal court, Google and Epic said the Android-maker would also share a catalogue of apps available in its Play Store with rivals and allow alternate app stores onto Android phones after registration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The new proposal should resolve concerns raised by Judge James Donato regarding a November 2025 settlement, they said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The judge would still need to approve it, though he has no role in changes outside the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Samat said changes to Google\u2019s fee structure weren\u2019t required by the US court in the Epic case or legislation in other parts of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Google opted to revamp the fees it charges to help \u201cmodernise\u201d the Android ecosystem, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new fee structure will decouple use of Google\u2019s billing system from its app store, Google Play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Developers that want to use its billing services will pay a flat 5% fee, Samat said, or they can opt to use other payment processors.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n A jury concluded in 2023 that Google\u2019s Android policies violate antitrust law. Donato issued an injunction ordering Google to make its app catalogue available to rival app stores so that they can better build competing products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Donato\u2019s injunction, which was later upheld by a federal appeals court, also banned preferential treatment for Google services on Android phones and required the company to let mobile app developers steer customers to lower payments outside of the Play Store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Google and Epic later reached a\u00a0settlement\u00a0that would have eliminated the catalogue sharing remedy, leading Donato to raise concerns at a January hearing that the new settlement was a \u201csweetheart deal\u201d for Google.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Google unveiled a new system for apps on its Android phones and tablets on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":632025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17934],"tags":[2612,71950,12911,9691,12909,167,9557,103601,16370],"class_list":["post-631996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-smartphones","tag-android-apps","tag-android-smartphones","tag-antitrust","tag-epic-games","tag-european-union","tag-google","tag-google-play-store","tag-google-play-store-fees","tag-smartphone-apps"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631996"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631996"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":632027,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631996\/revisions\/632027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Antitrust Probes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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