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Japan mandates Apple must allow third-party app stores and payment systems


This week, the JFTC published a series of guidelines that Apple companies must comply with, chief among them allowing 3rd-party app stores.

In a 119-page document issued this week, the Japan Fair Trade Commission established the Mobile Software Competition Act Guidelines, which are set to come into effect on December 18. Apple and Google will also be required to establish a firewall that prevents their own teams from accessing and leveraging sensitive developer data when building competing products, and will have to submit yearly compliance reports. While the document goes to great lengths to propose hypothetical scenarios that account for edge cases and potential exceptions (since many of the rules will certainly prove technically difficult to navigate and comply with), two provisions are far less open to interpretation:

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