Yes it steers larger app publishers away from utilizing other app stores, which in turn makes those other app stores less enticing, making it harder for other app stores to survive.
The app publishers don't have to choose this new pricing. They can stay with the old pricing, if they stay exclusively on Apple's App Store.
The reason Apple wants fewer app stores is that if fewer third party app stores survive, then there are fewer app stores with questionable or lacking review processes out there hosting malicious apps.
Just to make the connection super explicit for completeness, having fewer avenues for malicious apps is a good thing for user privacy.
There are other better ways to do it, like controlling one app store that has only well reviewed apps, but it seems the EU with the DMA left Apple only this bad way.
Apple gets other benefits from controlling the App Store, beyond protecting user privacy, don't get me wrong. Money being one, but not in a greed sense, but more because mostly that money pays the costs of running the development program, which are huge costs involving many thousands of Apple engineering salaries, which in turn enables the app ecosystem that benefits everyone. Another benefit is they can minimize the appearance of bad user experiences on their platform, to protect their brand, which they have invested a lot in and care a lot about.
The app publishers don't have to choose this new pricing. They can stay with the old pricing, if they stay exclusively on Apple's App Store.
The reason Apple wants fewer app stores is that if fewer third party app stores survive, then there are fewer app stores with questionable or lacking review processes out there hosting malicious apps.
Just to make the connection super explicit for completeness, having fewer avenues for malicious apps is a good thing for user privacy.
There are other better ways to do it, like controlling one app store that has only well reviewed apps, but it seems the EU with the DMA left Apple only this bad way.
Apple gets other benefits from controlling the App Store, beyond protecting user privacy, don't get me wrong. Money being one, but not in a greed sense, but more because mostly that money pays the costs of running the development program, which are huge costs involving many thousands of Apple engineering salaries, which in turn enables the app ecosystem that benefits everyone. Another benefit is they can minimize the appearance of bad user experiences on their platform, to protect their brand, which they have invested a lot in and care a lot about.