Apple Prepares to Bend the Knee by Allowing Third-Party App Stores on the iPhone

Apple has certainly had a bit of a rough year when it comes to its dealings with the European Union. – Firstly they’re having to deal with the new regulations that by 2025 all smart devices sold in the region must adhere to a USB-C charging standard, and then, of course, you have also got the whole business of their App Store which has long been criticised as ‘anti-competition’ (predominantly because Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales on the platform).

While Apple has seemed prepared to agree to the former USB-C matter, however, their stance on the latter has always been a bit more resistant. – Following a report via Bloomberg, however, sources are claiming that Apple may finally be getting ready to bend the knee with third-party app stores possibly set to arrive on iPhones before the end of next year!

Apple to Finally Open the Doors to Third-Party App Stores!

It should be noted that this move isn’t coming out of the goodness of their hearts. Nor, indeed, after having received a visit from three ghosts during the night. They’re getting ready for this because they know, with a pretty solid amount of certainty, that like the USB-C charging standard the EU is going to mandate that Apple will have to start allowing both third-party app stores, and more so, the ability for users to manually download files and programs from websites.

The only mildly curious question we don’t know the answer to yet is whether this third-party app store access will be kept limited to Europe or not.

Will Apple like it? Probably not. Then again, these third-party providers will, of course, live or die by the quality of the content they host. If it’s mostly just spam and adware riddled shovelware, Apple might find that a little competition actually makes their own platform look significantly better.

Whatever your opinion on this though, the results are definitely going to be interesting!

What do you think though? – Let us know in the comments!