Apple will allow users in Brazil to download and install third-party app stores on iOS devices from 2026 onwards. The iPhone maker has signed off on a Term of Commitment to Termination, or TCC, which requires Apple to allow third-party app stores and to let developers use external payment systems for in-app purchases, per a press release from CADE, Brazil’s competition authority. Apple is also compelled to make sure that warnings displayed to users regarding the installation of third-party app stores and the processing of payments via external systems are in neutral tone and wording. The company may continue to charge developers commissions for in-app purchases, although the fee structure was not disclosed. Such a move is reportedly part of Apple’s settlement with CADE, which marked the end of a years-long legal battle with the regulator.
This technology firm had previously reserved the right not to open the operating system for third-party app stores due to possible security threats posed by such stores. Brazil is the latest addition to a short but increasingly long list of countries which have compelled Apple to retreat on some aspects of longstanding policies which have widely been characterized as unreasonable and anti-competitive. Consumers in Europe and Japan have the right to have third-party app stores on iOS devices. In America, Apple has lost attempts to stay judicial reforms regarding App Store policies mandated by a US district court in a case involving Epic Games.
Later in 2021, a US district court ruled Apple has to allow its developers to point consumers toward potentially cheaper alternatives to Apple payments. Apple has since been forced to abandon other measures intended to thwart the injunction and has been ordered to abandon its new 27% fee levied against app developers who successfully use such alternatives and purchase an app purchase made outside of Apple’s App Store. Apple has also been prohibited from limiting which links developers point toward purchasing apps outside of apps. At the same time in Brazil, Apple has been given 105 days to implement new measures and will be fined as much as R$150 million (or $27 million) if it doesn’t. “To satisfy the regulatory mandates furnished to Apple from CADE, Apple has made changes to its iOS apps available to users in Brazil. Although new risks will emerge with these new mandates recommended to Apple by CADE, ‘we’ve successfully been able to preserve against certain threats and have maintained critical safeguards protecting younger users,’ stated a representative of Apple as quoted from Apple’s own press release and as relayed in commentary from lawyers and industry specialists with comments relayed from 9to5Mac. “…”these safeguards won’t provide full protection against threats and risks. However, they would ensure iOS remains ‘the best and most secure mobile operating system in Brazil’ and will continue to fight on behalf of its users and app developers,” they stated.
Apple versus CCI in India
In November 2025, Apple filed a suit in the Delhi High Court, disputing certain sections of the Indian competition law that give the CCI the power to impose fines worth up to 38 billion USD upon the technology company. The technology company’s wrangles with the country’s competition authority center on the debate surrounding whether the CCI ought to consider a firm’s world turnover while determining the penalties to impose upon the firm in cases where it contravenes the country’s competition law. It is the company’s first time to challenge the Indian antitrust penalty law, which was amended in the previous year. The CCI’s investigation arm established in 2024 that Apple abused its superior power in the applications market, according to charges made against the company. Since then, Apple has denied all charges issued by the CCI’s investigation wing in connection with the current antitrust investigation.
