One of many extra outstanding various app shops that emerged within the EU on account of the area’s Digital Markets Act is shutting down. The shop, Setapp Cellular, from the Ukrainian-based developer MacPaw, first launched in September 2024, providing dozens of apps throughout classes like productiveness, finance, video, photograph, creativity, and extra.
Its mannequin provided customers entry to all of Setapp’s cell apps via a $9.99 month-to-month subscription, offered the consumer’s Apple ID was related to an EU member state.
Now the corporate says all purposes might be faraway from Setapp Cellular by the top of the sundown date, February 16, 2026. Purposes which can be obtainable on Setapp Desktop is not going to be affected, the corporate advised TechCrunch.
The information of the shutdown, introduced on Setapp’s assist website, was first noticed by MacRumors.
MacPaw said that “still-evolving and sophisticated enterprise phrases that don’t match Setapp’s present enterprise mannequin” are the explanation for its choice.
The “complicated enterprise phrases” being referenced listed here are Apple’s sophisticated set of charges for apps working beneath its new enterprise phrases within the EU, which embody a controversial Core Expertise Charge that expenses builders €0.50 for every first annual set up over 1 million previously 12 months.
The tech big revised its charge construction final yr to keep away from additional penalties for noncompliance with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), however as an alternative of simplifying the charges, it made them extra complicated.
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One results of these fixed modifications is that builders can’t correctly plan the way to develop and monetize their enterprise. It additionally suggests the charges, as they stand, don’t make working an alternate app retailer within the EU a viable choice.
In an announcement shared with TechCrunch, Setapp stated it discovered its enterprise mannequin was not “viable,” because the business situations continued to vary. The assertion reads:
Setapp Cellular was a daring, breakthrough venture that aimed to supply EU iOS customers with entry to various app marketplaces — creating a brand new app ecosystem the place each builders and customers may thrive. We’re happy with what we now have achieved with it over the previous two years and nonetheless imagine passionately on this imaginative and prescient. Because of still-evolving business situations, we now have decided that it isn’t viable to proceed improvement or assist for Setapp Cellular inside Setapp’s present enterprise mannequin. Whereas we’re disenchanted to discontinue Setapp Cellular and let down our consumer base and developer neighborhood within the EU, we’re wanting ahead to pursuing the event of different improvements.
There are nonetheless different various app shops working within the EU, together with, most notably, the Epic Video games Retailer from the maker of Fortnite and the open supply AltStore.
