Russian lawmaker Fedot Tumusov has submitted draft legislation to cut and cap the commissions for mobile app sales from giants like Apple and Google, Reuters reports.
The bill was submitted to the lower house of parliament, stipulating that the sales be capped at 20 percent. It would also mandate that app sellers pay a third of their commissions toward a special training fund for IT specialists on a quarterly basis, the news outlet reported.
Currently, Apple collects a 30 percent commission on sales from its store.
In a social media post, Tumusov said lowering the commission “and having the ability to bring products to users is a growth opportunity for IT developers,” according to Reuters.
In the latest antitrust scrutiny case against the tech companies, Russia’s anti-monopoly service began to look into whether Apple had abused its dominance of the App Store market in the country. At that time, Apple said it planned to appeal the decision.
Apple has been a target for criticism on this front as of late. Most notably, the company has been involved in a lawsuit with Epic Games concerning the latter’s implementation of its own payment system in the popular Fortnite app. That went against Apple’s policies of companies going through the App Store payment, which gives Apple a cut of the profits.
Epic filed a lawsuit, and in response, Apple said it would be removing Epic’s profile entirely. The decision was considered inflammatory by some companies, worried they’d lose access to Epic’s Unreal Engine. But a judge recently said Apple couldn’t bar companies from access to that program.
In addition, Facebook has called Apple out over Apple’s reported demand that Facebook remove a message in its app, in which Facebook mentioned Apple’s 30 percent cut of sales online for its new events feature. In a statement, Facebook said people should know where their money is going.
Apple, in response, cited a provision of the App Store prohibiting developers from relaying “irrelevant” information.
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