A contempt ruling put a number on Apple's steering restriction

The figure or the record

On 11 December 2025, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Epic Games, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 25-2935, reviewing a district court order that had held Apple in civil contempt. The opinion records that Apple's standard in-app-purchase commission is 30%, and that after the original 2021 injunction required Apple to allow apps to link out to external payment pages, Apple set a 27% commission on purchases completed through those external links. The panel's summary states that "charging a 27% commission had a prohibitive effect, in violation of the injunction," affirming the district court's finding that Apple's compliance was not genuine. A separate district court order, issued 30 April 2025, had gone further and permanently barred Apple from "imposing any commission or any fee on purchases that consumers make outside an app," a ruling the appeals panel left partly intact and partly remanded for reconsideration of its exact form.

What the documents establish

The opinion establishes, as adjudicated fact rather than any party's characterisation, that the 27% figure was Apple's own choice and that Apple's internal analysis anticipated it would deter developers from using the newly permitted external links at all. It also confirms that Apple's App Store Review Guidelines now describe an "External Purchase Link Entitlement" permitting a developer, subject to entitlement, to link users to an external website for digital purchases, a mechanism that exists specifically because of this litigation.

Scope and caveats

The Ninth Circuit affirmed the contempt finding but reversed part of the district court's remedy, holding that an outright ban on any commission "did not qualify as a civil contempt sanction in its present form" and remanding that point; the zero-commission rule is therefore not a settled final figure as of the opinion's filing date. The ruling applies to Apple's iOS App Store in the United States and does not itself set terms for other stores or countries; Google Play's own policy, by contrast, describes a reduced 11% service fee for alternative billing in India and South Korea specifically, reached through separate regulatory pressure.

What to watch

Editorially, the figure to track is whatever commission rate, if any, the district court settles on for US linked-out purchases once the remanded portion is resolved, since the opinion leaves that number open rather than fixed.

• What commission rate, if any, does Apple apply to linked-out purchases once the remanded sanction is finally resolved?
• Do short-drama apps report shifting coin sales to external web payment pages now that the entitlement exists, and at what net saving after payment-processing costs?
• Does Google Play's regionally limited reduced fee expand to other markets where similar steering disputes arise?

What the court record settles is narrower than "Apple lost": it fixes the 27% figure as Apple's own documented choice, found prohibitive by two courts, while leaving the replacement rate for a later order still to be written.