Why move on, Mark? Yeah, that's right. Matt Fisher, the vice president of the App Store business across Apple's product lineup, including Apple Arcade. He's leaving the company in October. This is coming as part of a reorganization of the App Store business. Now, the App Store launched in 2008, and for the better part of a decade and a half, the App Store was the only game in town if you wanted applications on Apple devices. Right? You were in Apple's walled garden. You had to work within the parameters of the App Store rules and the Commission and Apple's payment platforms. But the European Union, other regulators, and developers have all pushed for Apple to open up. So Apple really needs to change with the times, especially if it wants this business to continue to grow. So they've essentially split the App Store organization within the company. And two, there's now a team related to the in-house app store front, right? The one that 99% of people are probably

going to use. And there's another team now dedicated to third-party app distribution. So that's alternative app stores, alternative payment methods, and technologies. And those groups are being run by two sort of younger Apple executives. One is Carson Oliver, the other is Antai. They've been a big part of the App Store for the last several years. And as part of that, Matt Fisher, who has been their boss, reporting to Phil Schiller, an Apple fellow who's ultimately responsible to Tim Cook for the App Store this year, is leaving, and the other two executives are now reporting to Schiller. But so Phil Schiller stays. And ultimately, a lot of this is trying to cross the T's, dot the I's when it comes to regulators. Will it ultimately - will this reorganization be able to make a more streamlined area of communication, at least? But I think this reorganization is going to do is internally put more emphasis on working with regulators and

acknowledging that the app paradigm is quickly shifting. Right. App distribution on Apple's platforms is no longer going to be only about the App Store. And Apple can no longer be stubborn about that. Right. And so it has realized that there is no going back and things are only going to change not only in the European Union, potentially in other places, but probably globally over the next five years or so. So all of that needs to be re-architected, right. Or developers are going to continue to push back against Apple. Regulators are going to continue to push back against Apple. So they sort of are coming from approaching this from a position of strength where they're going to enact new changes. Now they're going to put a bigger focus on app distribution for third-party methods onto the iPhone. They can't afford to be stubborn about this because ultimately they're going to lose revenue over time and create more issues with developers and regulators.

So I think this is a positive move for the company in terms of that reorganization. And, you know, Matt Fisher obviously had been dealing with a lot. He had been in a lot of meetings with lawyers. He had been in front of judges, lots of talks going on there with the regulators globally. So it's been a hard job for the last few years.

Apple's App Store Shakeup

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