The impact on Apple’s bottom line was a key part of its decision to charge developers a 27% fee to steer customers outside the App Store, even if it risked defying a court order, a company executive told a judge.

In 2023, as the iPhone maker was deliberating how to allow payments outside the App Store while maintaining revenue, it considered several options, senior executives said in testimony over the last two days in federal court.

One idea was to impose restrictions on links to alternative payments and charge no commission, they said. Also on the table was a 27% commission with fewer limits. The company ultimately chose the commission alongside stringent restrictions.

US district judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is determining whether the company has complied with her 2021 order to give consumers more options, capping a long-running fight over allegations by Epic Games that Apple tried to corner the lucrative mobile app market.

In hearings that began last year, the judge has repeatedly voiced scepticism that Apple is doing enough to promote competition.

Carson Oliver, who oversees the App Store, said he and other executives weighed the judge’s directive to provide “competitive pressure” on pricing against revenue considerations before they introduced “link outs” that allow app developers to collect payments outside the store.

While charging no commission at all “would be an extremely attractive option” for developers, Oliver said, some of his colleagues didn’t want to forgo compensation completely, including then-chief financial officer Luca Maestri.

Hard to justify

There was also an internal debate about how much to charge. Oliver said setting the fee at 20% for outside payments would make it hard to justify preserving the store’s standard 30% on most payments made in apps.

Philip Schiller, a long-time Apple executive who helped develop the App Store, has testified the company believed it was complying with the judge’s order. But he acknowledged in court on Monday that the company decision to charge a commission carried a risk that Rogers would conclude her directive hasn’t been fulfilled.

Read: App Store head to leave Apple

Epic Games has argued that made its outside payment links “commercially unusable” by imposing various fees and rules.

As the hearings have progressed, the maker of the popular video game Fortnite has accused the iPhone maker of withholding key documents by deeming them private attorney-client communications. — Josh Sisco, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP

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