A group of 48 China-based iOS developers have filed an antitrust complaint against Apple with the country's market regulator over the App Store's commission rates, the South China Morning Post reports.


The developers sent an open letter to China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), alleging that Apple failed to deliver on a promise to offer the lowest commission rate to the Chinese market. The group asked the SAMR to investigate and penalize Apple for allegedly abusing its market dominance to impose "unfair and excessively high" costs on local developers.

Apple currently charges a 25% commission on paid apps and in-app purchases in China, down from 30% after a cut made in March. The commission on subscription renewals, along with the rate for qualified developers in Apple's Small Business and Mini Apps Partner programs, was lowered to 12% from 15% at the same time.

The complaint follows a series of similar challenges to Apple's China ‌App Store‌ policies dating back nearly a decade. A Beijing law firm filed a complaint in 2017 over app removals and high fees, a Chinese consumer sued over ‌App Store‌ fees in 2021 (a claim ultimately rejected by a Shanghai court in 2024), and another Chinese law firm sued again in 2025.

The 48 developers point to Apple's recent moves elsewhere as evidence the company can do better. Apple lowered its Brazil commission last week to between 10% and 21% of a transaction, plus a 5% processing fee, while also letting Brazilian developers distribute iOS apps through other app marketplaces for a 5% fee. Apple made comparable adjustments in Japan late last year.

The developers want more than Brazil-style pricing. They argue that allowing third-party app stores in China, as Apple already does in the European Union under the Digital Markets Act, would push its effective commission down to as low as 5%.

Apple has faced mounting regulatory pressure over ‌App Store‌ fees worldwide in recent years. The company was fined €500 million ($572.2 million) last year for violating the EU's Digital Markets Act and has appealed the decision, while in the U.S. it has been ordered to allow external payment links following its legal fight with Epic Games. Apple said earlier this month that its ‌App Store‌ ecosystem generated more than $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025, with China contributing the largest share at $562 billion.
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Meta today unveiled its first smart glasses sold under its own brand rather than Ray-Ban or Oakley, undercutting its existing lineup on price as it works to expand its lead in the category before Apple enters the market.


The new Adventurer and Fury models are priced at $299, $80 less than the second-generation Ray-Ban ‌Meta‌ Wayfarer that launched last year. A third model, the Starfire, was designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner and costs $399.

EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban and Oakley, is manufacturing the glasses despite ‌Meta‌ designing them in-house and putting its own name on them, with EssilorLuxottica's logo appearing on the temple arms and packaging alongside ‌Meta‌'s.

The Adventurer has a rectangular Wayfarer-like shape available in standard and large sizes, while the Fury shares that silhouette but is thicker. The Starfire takes a slimmer oval shape and includes a small gemstone on the right lens near the camera, a metal nose pad designed to resist makeup residue, and the option to set an AI-generated version of Jenner's voice for the assistant and onboarding prompts. The Starfire's case includes a handwritten note from Jenner and a built-in mirror.

Across all three styles, ‌Meta‌ added a three-way adjustable nose pad, adjustable temple tips, and overextension hinges so the arms flare out slightly for wider head shapes. The companies are offering 26 color and lens combinations between the Adventurer and Fury alone, including tortoise, black, and green finishes, plus transition, polarized, and clear lens options, and the glasses support prescription lenses with a power range of -12 to +2.25.

The new glasses carry over the same 12-megapixel camera, 3K video capture, five-microphone array, and eight-hour battery life as the existing Ray-Ban ‌Meta‌ Gen 2 glasses, with the included case adding about 40 hours of additional charge. ‌Meta‌ is also offering a separate ‌Meta‌ Glasses Charging Stand compatible with the new models as well as the Ray-Ban ‌Meta‌ and Oakley ‌Meta‌ HSTN lines.

The glasses ship with ‌Meta‌'s Muse Spark AI model, which the company says improves response quality and adds 14 new languages to live translation support, including Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi, bringing the total to 20. A new "Dynamic Photo" feature captures a burst of images and selects the best shot, and pedestrian turn-by-turn navigation is coming to the camera-equipped lineup after debuting on ‌Meta‌'s display glasses.

According to Bloomberg, ‌Meta‌ also hinted that it's considering a version of its glasses without a camera, focusing on an audio-only experience for phone calls, media playback and interacting with its AI tools. A camera-free option could both lower the price point and enable new styles, it said, given the need to include fewer components.

The company also addressed Apple directly, calling the iPhone maker "formidable" in the space ahead of its own glasses debut. "I think you need to take anything they do seriously," ‌Meta‌'s Alex Himel said, adding, "they're good at hardware, they're good at design. There's a number of places where we won't necessarily be able to build the same quality consumer experience when paired with the phone, and so I think they're taking advantage of that."

Apple is widely expected to release its first smart glasses in 2027, designed in-house rather than through a partner brand. Apple's glasses will likely rely on a camera, microphones, and Siri for AI-driven features without an integrated display, putting them in direct competition with ‌Meta‌'s camera-equipped lineup rather than higher-end display models like ‌Meta‌'s Ray-Ban Display glasses.

‌Meta‌ said it explored facial recognition tools for identifying people the wearer knows but has not put the feature into active development while it works through privacy and societal concerns.

The Adventurer, Fury, and Starfire glasses are available starting today through ‌Meta‌ and EssilorLuxottica retail partners including LensCrafters.
This article, "Meta Launches Its Own $299 Smart Glasses Ahead of Apple's Debut" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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A new resale value study suggests that a $2,000 foldable iPhone could lose as much as $1,292 of its value within its first 12 months on the market, based on current foldable depreciation trends.


The estimate comes from SellCell, which analyzed the 12-month resale performance of flagship smartphones from Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola, and OnePlus. The site found that foldable smartphones lose an average of 64.6% of their value within a year, the worst depreciation rate of any smartphone category, compared with 55.3% for traditional smartphones.

SellCell calculates that foldable phone owners lose $997.69 on average after 12 months, compared with $605.32 for owners of traditional smartphones, a gap of $392.37. Foldables retain just 35.4% of their launch value after a year, versus 44.7% for non-folding phones.

Apple is widely rumored to be preparing its first foldable iPhone, expected to be called the "iPhone Ultra," for launch alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and ‌iPhone 18 Pro‌ Max in fall 2026, with a price of around $2,000.

Using that rumored price point, SellCell modeled what a foldable iPhone's resale value might look like after a year if it depreciated at the average rate seen across today's foldables, landing at around $708 after 12 months. This would represent a loss of roughly $1,292.

SellCell notes Apple has historically outperformed competitors on resale value. The iPhone 16 lineup retained 51.5% of its value after 12 months, the strongest of any major manufacturer in the study, ahead of OnePlus (46.8%), Google (40.8%), Samsung (39.5%), and Motorola (24.5%). If a foldable iPhone matched the ‌iPhone 16‌ lineup's depreciation rate instead, SellCell estimates it could be worth around $1,030 after a year, over $300 less depreciation than a typical foldable.

Real-world depreciation would likely land closer to Apple's existing figures. The base ‌iPhone 16‌ retained 51.4% of value after a year and the 256GB ‌iPhone 16‌ Pro Max retained 56.4%, though even at those rates, the total loss on a $2,000 device would still come out to roughly $1,000 over 12 months.
This article, "Apple's Foldable iPhone Could Lose Almost $1,300 in Value in First Year, Study Suggests" first appeared on MacRumors.com

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