our vision for the future
The world’s most popular online platforms and the app stores that govern access to them have become a critical gateway to the consumers of digital products and services worldwide. While they can be beneficial when operated fairly, they can also be used by platform owners to hurt developers and consumers. As regulators and legislators around the world seek to address these important issues, the Coalition for App Fairness urges them to recognize that every app developer, regardless of size or the nature of their business, is entitled to compete in a fair marketplace and should be afforded the following rights.
App Store Principles
No developer should be required to use an app store exclusively, or to use ancillary services of the app store owner, including payment systems, or to accept other supplementary obligations in order to have access to the app store.
No developer should be blocked from the platform or discriminated against based on a developer’s business model, how it delivers content and services, or whether it competes in any way with the app store owner.
Every developer should have timely access to the same interoperability interfaces and technical information as the app store owner makes available to its own developers.
Every developer should always have access to app stores as long as its app meets fair, objective and nondiscriminatory standards for security, privacy, quality, content, and digital safety.
A developer’s data should not be used to compete with the developer.
Every developer should always have the right to communicate directly with its users through its app for legitimate business purposes.
No app store owner or its platform should engage in self-preferencing its own apps or services, or interfere with users’ choice of preferences or defaults.
No developer should be required to pay unfair, unreasonable or discriminatory fees or revenue shares, nor be required to sell within its app anything it doesn’t wish to sell, as a condition to gain access to the app store.
No app store owner should prohibit third parties from offering competing app stores on the app store owner’s platform, or discourage developers or consumers from using them.
All app stores will be transparent about their rules and policies and opportunities for promotion and marketing, apply these consistently and objectively, provide notice of changes, and make available a quick, simple and fair process to resolve disputes.