The legal battle that can alter Apple's business

Epic Games, creator of video games like Fortnite, has become Apple's latest nightmare.

The firm - criticized with the high commissions that the apple company charges users of applications like yours in the App Store - decided to make the charges on its own, and Apple eliminated it from its digital store.

Epic filed a lawsuit and the trial is pending sentencing.

Thousands of application developers and Apple itself hold their breath at the verdict, which may change the juicy revenue share.

More information

• Epic Games against Apple: the trial begins for the conditions imposed by the App Store

There is no date for the sentence, but three weeks later, everything is already in the hands of Yvonne González Rogers, the district judge of Oakland (California) who takes the case of Epic against Apple.

The ruling will answer several far-reaching questions: is it legal for Apple to charge application developers high fees for using the App Store and prevent them from using their own charging systems?

Is there a competitive market, or is it taking advantage of your dominant position?

The answers may alter the current distribution of the pie, very lucrative for the maker of the iPhone, but also for Google, with similar practices in its Google Play store.

Apple charges a 30% commission for each payment made by users who enter the applications through the App Store. It has been this way since its opening in 2008, a symptom, for the magistrate, that there is no competition to attract application developers. "If there were real competition, that percentage would move and it is not like that," he said. According to

, Apple's defense turned the argument around and claimed that the technology giant has not raised commissions despite having improved the quality of its device in that time.

Epic Games is the company that has rebelled most fiercely against these fees: according to

paid 237 million dollars (about 195 million euros) in commissions to Apple between January 2017 and October 2020. Its legal battle has forced even Apple CEO Tim Cook down to the sand as a witness. His defense was based on the fact that the market does not end with the Cupertino firm. According to his thesis, developers can choose another smartphone or even, in the case of the creator of Fortnite, use devices such as Xbox, PlayStation or a computer to reach players, so they are not hostage to their commissions.

The case of Epic Games against Apple does not only concern both companies: the application developers and Google await its result with opposite interests, since Epic Games has also sued Google for the same reason.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the controversy, and perhaps because of it, Apple made a gesture with the developers who enter the least.

Last November, it lowered commissions from 30% to 15% for all those businesses that generate less than a million dollars.