Sharjah24 - Reuters: Apple Inc on Thursday agreed to loosen App Store restrictions on small developers, striking a deal in a class-action lawsuit as the iPhone maker awaits a ruling by the same judge in a separate App Store dispute brought by the developer behind "Fortnite."
The deal includes changes in how all developers can communicate with customers, an issue highlighted by the judge herself in the Fortnite case.
But Apple kept intact the vast majority of the App Store business practices that have been challenged in courts and legislatures. Instead it gave up only $100 million, a small sum for a company worth more than $2.4 trillion, and a set of email marketing restrictions that legal experts had said could be difficult to defend even under a prior U.S. Supreme Court case that allows companies to bar their business partners from steering customers toward alternative payment methods.