The Ministry of Digital Development will introduce European standards on alternatives to the App Store in the Russian Federation
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The Ministry of Digital Development has returned to the idea, first voiced a little over a year ago, to oblige Apple to allow installation of applications from third-party stores: the bill is planned to be submitted to the State Duma in the spring session. Russian regulators have few mechanisms to force Apple to comply with requirements, experts admit, but “in general, the company continues to comply with decisions of courts and supervisory authorities.” The initiative of the Ministry of Digital Development is similar to the European DMA law; in 2024, Apple presented methods for implementing the norms.
The Ministry of Digital Development plans to introduce a bill during the spring session of the State Duma that will oblige Apple to open its phones to install applications from third-party stores, Minister Maksut Shadayev told Kommersant. We are talking about a bill announced back in December 2022: then Mr. Shadayev compared it with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) adopted in the European Union. Now the document, according to the minister, is being finalized based on proposals from the presidential administration.
The initiative was announced against the backdrop of the removal of developments from Russian sanctioned companies, mainly banks, from the Apple and Google mobile application stores. According to Kommersant, all owners of mobile systems, device manufacturers and store operators will be subject to regulation; they will have to ensure the installation of all applications on equal terms (see Kommersant of April 26, 2023).
The DMA came into force in the EU in November 2022, but all its provisions will come into force from 6 March 2024. Apple on January 25 presented how it will follow the new norms on its developer website and in preview versions of the iOS system. Even with the EU-only changes, iOS doesn’t allow third-party apps to be installed as freely as Android. Their developers must publish in one of the alternative stores, and the creators of the latter must have a letter of credit for €1 million and pay royalties to Apple for the use of “core technologies.”
All applications must also be notarized by Apple: the company checks them for security, cryptographically signs them, and, if the application is found to be malicious, reserves the right to block its launch on phones.
In iOS preview, when launching in the EU, Apple has also disabled the installation of web apps on the home screen. It allows you to run specially marked-up sites (PWA, progressive web applications) without browser interface elements; Visually, such sites are similar to regular applications. Sberbank, Tinkoff Bank, Alfa Bank, etc., after the withdrawal of their applications from the App Store, began to develop web versions of their online banking systems as PWA; Russian Railways announced similar plans in December 2023.
If Apple ever resorts to similar changes in the Russian Federation, “users will still be able to use PWA through the browser,” says Alexey Rodionov, an expert in the Google Developer Experts program for web technologies. At the same time, many companies, according to him, still do not consider the web platform a real competitor to Android and iOS: “Many PWAs are made in a hurry as a reaction to the removal of native applications. Most developers do not use the available features of the web platform, such as fingerprint authentication, and some even have problems with layout for different screen sizes.” In addition, people are accustomed to looking for applications in stores – “they bring user traffic, and from there users learn about most applications,” notes Mr. Rodionov.
Flowwow CTO Dmitry Shesternin admitted that regulations like DMA, if adopted in the Russian Federation, could simplify the work of sanctioned app publishers, “but without details it is difficult to say how much easier or more difficult it will be for developers in general to work with Apple.” According to his experience, there are currently no difficulties in the work of companies from the Russian Federation with Apple: “We go through moderation quite quickly, there are practically no checks of our applications. We may receive follow-up questions from Apple two or three times a year.”
Russian regulators have few mechanisms that can force Apple to comply with changing legal requirements, admits Alexey Minaev, a teacher at the Moscow Digital School educational platform. “But in general, the company, despite the stoppage of sales in the Russian Federation, continues to comply with the decisions of the courts and supervisory authorities and pays fines. So the initiative of the Ministry of Digital Development does not look hopeless,” he notes.
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