APPLE TURNOVER

What the App Store changes mean for iPhone users

- BRIAN X. CHEN

For iPhone users, the experience of installing apps has been mostly seamless for over a decade. You look up an app and tap a button to download it.

The not-so-seamless part has involved buying some things.

Paying for subscriptions and for virtual goods such weapons inside games can usually be done instantly by scanning your face and letting Apple handle the transaction. But app makers have long been required to pay Apple steep commissions of up to 30% per sale, leading brands including Netflix and Amazon to require iPhone users to log in to their websites to pay them.

Because of Apple's recent fallout with a federal judge, the App Store is starting to change. The judge ordered Apple to start allowing some apps to collect payments from users without paying a cut. And app developers are now free to include graphics or buttons to direct you to their own sites to buy things like subscriptions, books, music and podcasts through them directly.

Some companies are already taking advantage of the policy change. Amazon's Kindle app added a button for buying e-books. Patreon, which sells subscriptions to content including videos and podcasts from creators, started posting lower prices. And Spotify is now offering free trials through its app.

But aside from those high-profile examples, what is going to happen to the App Store? Will everything, from streaming subscriptions to extra lives in a game, become cheaper, and buying things become easier? I interviewed mobile app developers big and small, and the consensus was: It’s complicated. Although costs of some virtual goods might appear to dip, app prices in general will probably remain the same.

"The developers will keep the excess profits," said Eric Seufert, the author of Mobile Dev Memo, a publication covering mobile apps. “We won't see them get cheaper.”

Here’s what happened and how changes in Apple's App Store could affect you.

WHAT HAPPENED?