Developers doubt a DOJ antitrust settlement would loosen Apple's control of the iPhone, The Information reportsDevelopers doubt a DOJ antitrust settlement would loosen Apple's control of the iPhone, The Information reports

Developers are questioning whether a settlement of the US Justice Department's antitrust case against Apple would change much about how the iPhone works with other companies' products.

The Information reported on 16 October that PayPal and Epic Games are among the companies that have raised concerns with the department, and that officials favour a negotiated resolution. According to MacRumors' account of the report, the department has asked developers to suggest how the iPhone could work better with rival products, and the discussion centres on interoperability: what competing accessories and payment services can reach. Proton, the Swiss privacy company, is reported to doubt that Apple would accept terms developers would call satisfactory. No agreement has been reached.

Every account of this so far traces back to The Information's report. Neither Apple nor the Justice Department has commented on it.

What is the case about?

The Justice Department sued Apple in March 2024 in the District of New Jersey, with 16 state and district attorneys general, and more states have joined since. The complaint says Apple kept its smartphone monopoly through five kinds of restriction: on super apps that host mini apps, on cloud game streaming, on cross-platform messaging, on rival digital wallets and on third-party smartwatches. Apple denies it and argues the case threatens its ability to design products that work together.

Judge Julien Neals refused to dismiss the case on 30 June 2025, according to the National Law Review. In July 2026 Bloomberg reported that Apple and the department were in early settlement talks, that Apple had made several offers that year, and that any deal could include commitments enforceable in court. No trial date has been set.

What has Apple already changed?

Some of the complaint's targets have moved since it was filed. Apple added RCS to Messages in iOS 18, opened the iPhone's NFC chip to third-party contactless payments from iOS 18.1, allowed cloud streaming game apps and launched a mini apps programme for developers. It has kept improving RCS since: iOS 27 brought inline replies and full Tapbacks to chats with Android phones.

What developers told The Information is that the changes leave gaps. Rival smartwatches still lack much of the integration the Apple Watch gets, and competing payment apps are reported to remain at a disadvantage despite NFC access. Apple Watch still works only with an iPhone, as Bloomberg noted in July.

Our take

The question in this report is not whether there will be a settlement but how wide it would be. A consent decree in this case would most likely list specific technical commitments, and the gap developers describe is the space between an API existing and a rival product being as good as Apple's own. NFC access is the clearest example: the chip is open, yet PayPal is still lobbying.

We have watched that gap play out once already. After the Epic ruling, Apple's US external payment link rules were fought over clause by clause, and Epic is still arguing with Apple over the documents behind its link-out commission. A settlement that names features without naming parity would invite the same years of argument over what compliance means.

For iPhone owners the near-term answer is that nothing changes, and APPDOOK would not plan a purchase around this. The items worth watching are the ones that would touch daily use:

• Smartwatches: whether a deal requires notification, reply and background access for third-party watches equal to the Apple Watch.
• Payments: whether wallets get the same default and double-click access as Apple Pay, not just the chip.
• Enforcement: whether the commitments are court-enforceable, as Bloomberg said the department wanted, and for how long.
• The states: whether the attorneys general sign on, since they could keep litigating without them.

For app makers, the practical point is that the department is asking for suggestions now. A developer with a concrete interoperability problem, documented with the API it lacks, is better placed than one with a general complaint, because a settlement will be written in exactly those terms. What is still unknown is what Apple has offered this time, and whether any of it goes beyond what iOS already does.