Apple, in a legal settlement announced on Thursday with a group of app developers, said it would allow developers to urge customers to pay them outside their iPhone apps.
The move would allow app makers to avoid paying Apple a commission on their sales and could appease developers and regulators concerned with its control over mobile apps, including strict policies designed to force developers to pay it a cut of their sales.
The settlement appears to be a small price to pay for the world’s richest company to avoid another extended legal fight that could have posed major risks to its business by targeting the iPhone App Store. In practice, some major companies, such as Spotify, already push their customers to evade Apple’s commissions.
Apple is still awaiting a decision from a federal judge in a separate lawsuit that was filed by Epic Games, the maker of the popular game Fortnite,…
