South Korea lets developers bypass Apple and Google's app stores fees

Apple and Google have been under fire regarding their app stores fees for quite some time now. The US, the EU and the UK are all investigating the possibility of Apple and Google infringing several antitrust laws but South Korea is the first country to take action.

The country's president Moon Jae-in and his party passed a bill yesterday that would free Korean developers from the App Store and Google Play Store's fees as well as in-app transaction fees. They are usually 30% but both companies lowered that to 15% for small developers. Still, mobile app revenue in 2020 brought in a total of $111 billion and a good portion of that went directly to Apple and Google.

Of course, the two US-based companies aren't exactly happy with the new law. Apple says that this imposes a risk to the consumer as the law undermines privacy, payment security and managing purchases will become way harder, while parental control issues could arise.

Google, on the other hand, cited lower device cost and financial stability of both parties (itself and the developers) as the reason for those fees.

Source