North Dakota Senate Rejects Bill To Regulate Apple App Store

Apple has cause to breathe a sigh of relief after North Dakota’s state Senate voted down a bill that would’ve forced it and other companies to let software developers utilize their own app payment schematics, CNBC writes.

That would’ve been a change from how Apple and Google currently operate, where companies utilizing their app stores as a go-between have to pay a 30 percent fee.

The North Dakota bill is the first one in the country to address the app store issue, CNBC writes. If it had passed the Senate, it still would have had to pass the state’s House.

The bill had targeted companies making over $10 million per year through app stores, which essentially just included the app stores from Apple and Google. The bill would have required these companies to offer alternate payment processors in their stores and let developers avoid giving these companies the 30 percent cuts.

Apple, opposing the bill, said its app store was a core part of its business and that their rigid rules also help to keep customers safe from fraud and scams, CNBC writes.

Erik Neuenschwander, an Apple official working on privacy issues, said last week that North Dakota’s proposed bill would have threatened “to destroy the iPhone as you know it.”

But state Senator Kyle Davison, who introduced the bill, maintained that it would have given the country a “chance to be a leader” and said the bill was one of “economic development.” He said if it had been allowed, there wouldn’t be “enough hangar space to fly the private jets in from California,” CNBC writes.

A lobbyist introduced the bill to Davison. The lobbyist told Davison it would be a good idea because of the way the tech giants were taking business away from smaller companies. Davison went with the idea because of the potential to draw new tech companies to North Dakota, not traditionally a hotbed for such things.