Apple Gives Ground in a Strategic Retreat From Strict App Store Rules

The company, under pressure from app developers and regulators, is making concessions while protecting lucrative parts of its App Store.

SAN FRANCISCO — When Apple opened its App Store in 2008, a year after it introduced the iPhone, the 30 percent fee it charged developers to sell their software in the store was an afterthought. But as apps went mainstream, the store turned into a $20 billion a year business, by some estimates. Now, under pressure from regulators and many of those developers, Apple is making a series of concessions that would appear to chip away at that giant business. On Wednesday, prompted by an investigation by the Japanese Fair Trade Commission, Apple agreed to allow some companies, like Netflix and Spotify, to direct their users to payment methods outside its App Store when they sign up for subscriptions.