A group of Chinese developers has filed a complaint against Apple over its “unfair” App Store commission rates to China’s market watchdog, reports the South China Morning Post.
In March the tech giant Apple announced that it was reducing the standard commission for App Store purchases from 30% to 25% in mainland China following “discussions” with Chinese regulators. Apparently, this wasn’t enough.
In an open letter to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, 48 iOS developers claim the tech giant failed to fulfill its promise to offer the lowest commission rate to the Chinese market.
The developers are asking the antitrust regulator to investigate and penalize Apple for allegedly “abusing the company’s market dominance” to implement “unfair and excessively high” costs on local creators, according to the letter published by one of the developers, Tian Junwei, on his WeChat blog.
This isn’t the first time Apple has had issues in China. In September 2025 a Chinese labor organization again accused the company of allowing long hours, discrimination, and delayed pay at Foxconn’s main iPhone factory.
In 2017, a Beijing law firm filed a complaint on behalf of local developers, accusing Apple of removing apps without a proper explanation and taking an excessive 30% cut of in-app transactions. In 2021, a Chinese consumer sued Apple for its high iOS app store fees; however, the claim was rejected by a court in Shanghai in 2024.
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