Australian Court Orders Apple to Open iPhone to Rival App Stores and Outside Payments From March 2027

Australia’s Federal Court has ordered Apple to open the iPhone to rival app stores, direct downloads from developer websites and alternative payment systems for Australian users, delivering one of the most significant courtroom defeats the company has suffered anywhere in the world in its six-year war with Epic Games over control of the App Store.

The remedies judgment, handed down on Thursday, 22 October 2026, by Justice Jonathan Beach in Epic Games Inc v Apple Inc (No 2) [2026] FCA 1552, runs to 1,104 paragraphs and converts the judge’s August 2025 liability finding — that Apple misused its substantial market power in breach of section 46 of Australia’s Competition and Consumer Act 2010 — into binding orders, according to Reuters and multiple technology publications that reviewed the ruling.

The most consequential changes must take effect by noon Melbourne time on 1 March 2027. Apple may apply by 15 February 2027 to extend that deadline to 3 May 2027, and the company has said it will seek a stay and appeal the outcome, which could delay or reshape implementation.

What the court ordered

At the heart of the decision is distribution. Apple must allow iPhone users whose Apple Account country or region is set to Australia to find, download, install and update apps through competing app marketplaces and directly from developer websites, not just through Apple’s own App Store, according to reporting by 9to5Mac, MacRumors and Engadget on the judgment.

Developers enrolled in Apple’s Developer Program — wherever in the world they are based — will be able to distribute software to those Australian users through alternative channels. Apple must provide the necessary tools and programming interfaces on substantially the same terms it offers for App Store distribution, and it cannot charge users or developers for access to those channels or obstruct their use, according to MacRumors’ summary of the orders.

Crucially, the ruling anticipates Apple’s past behaviour in other jurisdictions. The company cannot penalise developers for using competing stores or payment services, and it cannot add hurdles to installing outside apps that are out of proportion to the genuine security risk involved, according to Digital Trends’ account of the orders. The court did, however, preserve Apple’s ability to require automated security scanning and notarisation — by Apple or a qualified third party — for apps distributed outside the App Store.

Payments: the commission walls come down

The second pillar of the judgment targets money. Developers will be able to offer alternative in-app payment systems, link to cheaper external checkout pages, and offer lower prices through competing payment services, without being forced to use Apple’s in-app purchasing system alongside them, according to 9to5Mac.

Apple cannot require developers to report transactions processed through alternative payment providers, allow it to audit those transactions, or demand that content purchased elsewhere also be offered through Apple’s own payment system — conditions the company currently imposes in other regions including Brazil and Japan, according to the same report.

The ruling also restricts Apple’s ability to collect fees on purchases it does not process. It cannot charge any commission on purchases made through alternative payment services or websites in apps distributed outside the App Store, according to MacRumors. For apps distributed through the App Store itself, fees are capped at the equivalent of what Apple charges for payments involving physical goods or services, plus any genuine, reasonable additional costs it incurs for digital purchases.

Fortnite returns — immediately

One order takes effect without waiting for the March 2027 deadline. Apple must take the necessary steps to readmit Epic Games’ apps — Fortnite included — to the Australian App Store once Epic submits a written application, provided the apps comply with the developer rules Apple is still entitled to enforce, according to Reuters and Engadget.

Epic Games said Fortnite would return to the Australian App Store on 22 October, the day after the judgment. “Big news: Fortnite is coming back to the App Store in Australia tomorrow! This is great news for developers worldwide and iOS users in Australia who will benefit from an open mobile app ecosystem,” the company’s newsroom account posted on X, according to Engadget.

The return ends more than six years of exile. Apple removed Fortnite in August 2020 after Epic introduced its own in-app payment method that bypassed Apple’s commission system, triggering the legal war that has since played out in courtrooms on several continents. Fortnite returned to iOS globally in May 2026 — everywhere except Australia, where Apple continued to enforce terms the Australian court had found unlawful, according to Engadget.

Apple says it will appeal

Apple signalled it disagreed with large parts of the decision. “We will request a stay and appeal the outcome to seek a resolution that respects our intellectual property and protects the safe, secure experience that consumers and developers expect from the App Store,” a spokesperson told Reuters, according to 9to5Mac.

The company argued that it does not hold a monopoly position in Australia or any market worldwide, and said it “respectfully disagreed” with many of the findings, including a market definition it said had been rejected by other courts, according to Engadget’s reporting on the statement.

Apple did win several points in the judgment. The court rejected Epic’s request to extend the orders worldwide, let Apple keep its security scanning and notarisation requirements, and did not require Apple to distribute rival app stores through its own App Store — a distinction Justice Beach had already established in last year’s liability ruling, according to 9to5Mac. The judge also rejected Epic’s claim of “unconscionable conduct,” declined to set commission rates itself, and formalised the competition-law findings in related Apple and Google class actions without deciding that any particular developer or user had been overcharged, leaving compensation unresolved, according to the reports.

Epic’s 85 per cent costs victory

Justice Beach also ordered Apple to pay 85 per cent of Epic Games’ legal costs incurred through the original trial, according to particle.news’ summary of the ruling. A decision on costs for the subsequent remedies hearings was reserved.

The six-year Australian litigation began when Epic sued Apple in 2020 after the Fortnite removal, arguing that Apple’s control over iOS app distribution and payments breached competition law. Justice Beach’s liability judgment in August 2025 found that Apple held “a substantial degree of power” in the iOS app distribution services market and the iOS in-app payment solutions market, and had used its developer agreements and App Store guidelines to restrict competition. Thursday’s orders turn those findings into enforceable reality.

Australia follows — and goes further than — Europe

Australia is following a path the European Union pioneered with its Digital Markets Act, which forced Apple to allow alternative app marketplaces and web-based app distribution in the EU from iOS 17.4 in 2024. But Apple continued to impose conditions and fees on developers using those options, drawing accusations — including from Epic — of “malicious compliance” designed to make the alternatives commercially unattractive, according to Softonic’s analysis of the new ruling.

The Australian judgment appears written with that history in mind: it explicitly bars the kinds of fees, friction and reporting requirements that Apple has used elsewhere to blunt alternative distribution, and the 1,104-paragraph judgment includes clauses aimed at precluding the “core technology” and developer fees Apple deployed in Europe, according to Engadget. Similar regulatory pressure is building in Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, where separate proceedings and legislation continue to chip at the same walls.

Analysis: Why It Matters

The toughest remedy Apple has faced anywhere

To appreciate the scale of this judgment, line it up against everything that came before. The EU’s Digital Markets Act forced Apple to permit alternative app stores in Europe, but left the company wide latitude over the commercial terms — and Apple used it, layering on fees and conditions that critics called compliance in name only. A United States court ordered Apple to allow links to outside payments, but stopped short of dismantling the distribution monopoly itself. What Justice Beach has done is different: he has ordered both doors open — rival stores and rival payments — and then bolted the second set of doors shut against the workarounds, by capping fees, banning friction, and forbidding Apple from even knowing what transactions pass through alternative processors. By that measure, this is the most aggressive remedy imposed on Apple’s App Store anywhere in the world. The question it raises is no longer whether the walled garden has cracks, but whether the wall itself can survive in its current form.

Written to stop “malicious compliance”

The most revealing passages of the judgment are the ones that read as answers to Apple’s behaviour in Europe. The prohibition on requiring developers to report alternative-payment transactions or submit to audits is not an abstract legal nicety; it is a direct response to the mechanisms Apple has used in other territories to keep watch — and leverage — over commerce it no longer controls. The ban on adding installation hurdles “out of proportion to the security risk” is aimed squarely at the scare screens and multi-tap warning flows that have greeted European users attempting sideloading. Whether these provisions work in practice will depend on enforcement, but their presence shows a court that has studied the defendant’s playbook and is determined not to issue an order that can be complied with and defeated at the same time. If Australia succeeds where Brussels struggled, the Australian model — orders drafted against known evasions — will become the template regulators everywhere copy.

Apple did not lose everything — and that matters

It would be a mistake to read this judgment as a total defeat, and the parts Apple won deserve scrutiny. The court refused a worldwide injunction, meaning the ruling’s effects stay inside Australia’s borders. It let Apple keep security scanning and notarisation, preserving a genuine safety argument the company will now lean on heavily. And it declined to set commission rates — a line judges have been reluctant to cross, since price-setting looks uncomfortably like regulation by courtroom. These are not trivial carve-outs. Notarisation, in particular, remains the instrument through which Apple could most plausibly re-impose control, if it interprets “genuine security risk” generously. The judgment’s durability will be decided in the margins: in how a future court reads “proportionate” when Apple points to a piece of malware that slipped through a third-party store, and in how regulators police the line between protection and pretext.

The revenue arithmetic nobody can avoid

Behind the legal architecture sits a commercial number Apple guards fiercely: the commission revenue flowing from the App Store. The company has never disclosed Australia-specific App Store revenue, but the global Services division — in which the App Store is the largest contributor — is a hundreds-of-billions engine, and commissions on digital goods sit near the top of technology’s most profitable margins. The Australian judgment does not just reduce those commissions; for apps distributed outside the App Store it eliminates them entirely, and for App Store apps it caps them at physical-goods equivalents. Even confined to Australian accounts, that is real money walking out the door — and it sets a precedent with a multiplier. Every regulator watching this case can now point to a working model of a zero-commission alternative channel. Apple’s decision to appeal is therefore about far more than Australia; it is about preventing a template from taking root. The appeal is not the epilogue of this story. It is the next chapter, and the more expensive one.

The global ratchet turns again

There is a pattern in Apple’s regulatory defeats worth naming: each one makes the next one easier. The EU ruling gave Australian lawyers a blueprint and Australian judges a vocabulary. The Australian ruling will now give ammunition to proceedings in Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States, where Epic, Spotify and others have been arguing versions of the same case for years. Tim Sweeney’s long campaign — widely dismissed as quixotic when Fortnite was ejected in 2020 — has produced, market by market, a slow-motion dismantling of the arrangements Apple built over seventeen years. None of these rulings alone breaks the model. Together, they describe a direction of travel that is becoming hard to mistake: the closed iPhone is being pried open jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and the jurisdictions are beginning to learn from each other’s mistakes. Apple’s appeal in Australia will be watched in every one of those places — not as a local dispute, but as a stress test of whether the ratchet can be turned back.

What to Watch Next

1. The stay and appeal: Apple’s request to suspend the orders while it appeals will be the first flashpoint. If granted, the March 2027 deadline could slip by months or years; if refused, Apple must begin building the compliance machinery immediately.
2. The 15 February extension bid: even before any appeal is decided, watch whether Apple asks the court to push the deadline to 3 May 2027 — and what technical reasons it offers for needing more time.
3. Fortnite’s actual return: the readmission order takes effect immediately on Epic’s written application. Whether Apple processes it smoothly or finds fresh developer-rule objections will be an early signal of its posture.
4. Who builds the first rival store: Epic has the motive and the infrastructure, but the orders are open to any enrolled developer worldwide. The race to launch Australia’s first serious third-party iPhone marketplace starts now.
5. Copycat pressure abroad: regulators in Japan, the UK and the US are already circling. Expect this judgment — especially its anti-evasion provisions — to be cited in filings and legislative debates within weeks.

Sources

• Reuters — Epic Games’ ‘Fortnite’ returns to Apple App Store in Australia
• 9to5Mac — Apple must open iPhone to alternative app stores in Australia
• Engadget — Fortnite is coming back to Apple’s Australian App Store following court ruling
• MacRumors — Apple ordered to open iPhone to rival app stores in Australia