Japan’s iPhone and iPad users are about to get a choice they’ve only ever been promised in theory: new places to browse for apps, new ways to pay for them, and a looser grip on defaults that for years steered people toward Apple’s own services. Those changes arrive as part of iOS 26.2 and are Apple’s answer to the Mobile Software Competition Act (MSCA), a Japanese law designed to pry open the biggest smartphone gatekeepers and give developers alternative routes to reach users. Apple says the updates are meant to satisfy the letter of the law while keeping what it calls the “safety and privacy” scaffolding that underpins iOS.

Put simply, the MSCA forces “designated providers” of core smartphone software to stop using technical lock-ins and fees that effectively choke off competition. That means Apple can no longer insist that every iPhone app in Japan must flow through the App Store and its In-App Purchase system. In practice, the law requires Apple to permit alternative marketplaces, third-party payment processing, and fewer barriers around browser and assistant choices — while demanding safeguards against scams and privacy abuses. The regulators who wrote the law want rivalry without the chaos that an entirely open platform could cause.

What users will notice first is the ability to install apps from approved alternative marketplaces. Developers and companies can now operate their own storefronts inside iOS for Japanese users; the system exposes APIs and platform hooks so these stores behave like first-class citizens rather than mere download pages. But this isn’t the absolutist sideloading some expected after Europe’s rules: Apple will require marketplace operators to meet security and privacy standards, and the OS will show system-level warnings when you step out of the App Store. In other words, you’ll get more choice — but Apple will still play referee.

Payments are where the practical tradeoffs live. Under the new rules, developers can offer alternative in-app payment processors or send users to a web checkout for digital purchases. Apple’s own payment system will remain available — and it will retain conveniences like subscription management inside Apple Account (formerly Apple ID) settings — but Apple will also charge a new “payment processing” surcharge when you use its rails in Japan. The company’s published terms show a multi-tiered fee map: App Store transactions will generally carry the familiar developer commission (10 percent for eligible small developers or subscription renewals, 21 percent for others), plus a 5 percent Apple Payment Processing Fee when the In-App Purchase system is used; web purchases made through links from apps will attract a 15 percent store-services commission (10 percent for small developers or eligible subscriptions); and apps sold through alternative marketplaces will pay a 5 percent “Core Technology Commission” to Apple. Those numbers aren’t academic — they’re central to whether new stores can actually undercut the App Store on price.

All of that sounds neat until you unpack the messy bits. If you buy a subscription with Apple’s In-App Purchase, it shows up in your Apple subscription dashboard and is easy to manage and refund through Apple support. If you buy via a website or a third-party processor, your receipts, refunds and support are suddenly shifted to the developer’s systems. That adds friction for users and additional operational headaches for developers: chargebacks, local payment rails, different tax handling, and customer care. Japan’s approach deliberately allows hybrid models — apps may present both Apple’s payment option and an alternative — which is more flexible than the past, but also more complicated. Apple and the regulators are betting that transparent disclosure and marketplace standards will blunt the downside.

There are broader platform tweaks, too. iOS 26.2 gives alternative web engines a fairer shot at being a default, and the system will give clearer choices for default browsers and possibly other defaults. Developers have also discovered hooks in the iOS 26.2 betas suggesting third-party voice assistants might be treated differently in Japan — a reminder that Japan’s law is nudging Apple on more than just payments and downloads. Apple says it built specific protections — extra warnings, requirements for marketplace operators, and age-rating obligations — to reduce the risk that opening the platform becomes an exploitable vector for fraud or tracking.

For Japanese users, the immediate upside is simple: more storefronts, more offers, and the potential for lower prices or richer bundles from developers who can choose how and where to sell. A game studio could launch seasonal promotions through its own marketplace; a subscription service might experiment with Japan-only plans without running every yen through Apple. The downside is cognitive load: managing subscriptions across multiple vendors, juggling receipts outside Apple’s ecosystem, and learning which transactions are covered by Apple’s refund and safety nets and which are not. Regulators are essentially betting that labels, warnings and Apple’s approval process for marketplaces will prevent that complexity from tipping into harmful confusion.

For developers, the calculus is nuanced. Big publishers can justify the overhead of running a marketplace or integrating alternative payments; small teams may simply add a web checkout link to shave a sliver off fees. But the savings on headline commissions must be weighed against real costs: running payment operations, fraud monitoring, customer support and compliance in Japan. Apple has also positioned its 5 percent cut for third-party storefronts and the 5 percent processing fee for its own rails as a kind of maintenance charge for the platform services it continues to provide, a framing that some developers will accept and others will resist. The net effect is a real experiment — one that will show whether “partial openness” can create meaningful competition without blowing up the user experience.

It’s worth pausing on the international angle. Europe’s DMA pushed Apple toward deeper technical openness, and Apple’s EU implementation prompted protests from some developers who said the rules were too blunt and added complexity. Japan’s MSCA, by contrast, aims for a middle path: open things up, but ask Apple to remain a gatekeeper of sorts. If Japan’s model proves that competition can be encouraged without a complete removal of platform safeguards, other countries — especially in Asia — may copy that template. If not, expect regulators to keep tightening the screws.

Strategically, the shift underscores a new reality for Apple: iOS is no longer a single monolithic market with one global rulebook. Instead, Apple is now fine-tuning iOS region by region, responding to different legal ecosystems in the EU, Japan and elsewhere. That puts Apple in a delicate position: it must preserve a coherent, reliable experience across those islands of customization while defending a revenue model that has funded the App Store infrastructure for more than a decade. For the next few years, Japan will function as a live lab for that balancing act — and developers and users everywhere will be watching to see whether the “Japan model” becomes a template or a curiosity.

In the end, this feels less like a revolutionary opening of iOS and more like the start of a complicated negotiation between choice and convenience. Japan’s MSCA has given mobile users something they wanted for a long time: the possibility to choose. Whether that choice turns into real competition, or whether it simply repackages Apple’s tollbooth in a thinner wrapper, will depend on how the ecosystem handles the tedium beneath the headlines — the receipts, the refunds, the fraud checks, and the small print that separates a good deal from a trap. Regulators, Apple and developers all say they’ve thought about those risks; the real test is what happens when a customer taps “Buy” outside the App Store for the first time.