"You can sideload on both in Europe since it's required by law."

This is in the works, right. It's not possible at this moment, is it.

How will Apple prevent people in the USA from buying iPhones in Europe and bringing them back to the US.

Simply by iPhones being ~40% cheaper in the US.

But that's already true right now, irrepective of this coming change, isn't it.

To lure US customers, app developers could offer lower prices to users who sideload, to offset the higher price paid for iPhones in the EU. App developers selling to EU iPhone owners will be able to avoid the 30% Apple tax and can pass on the savings to customers. Developers could offer more features to users who sideload. There are a variety of possible incentives developers could offer to lure users away from Apple App Store. That is assuming developers see the long term benefit of getting people to stop using the App Store and avoiding the Apple tax.

Yes, that’s why no one (almost, of course) from the US would buy an iPhone in Europe anyway.

> app developers could offer lower prices to users who sideload, to offset the higher price paid for iPhones in the EU

So app developers should bear the brunt of Apple's hardware price strategy? Seems unfair.

One of the complaints about Apple from app developers is the cost of doing business on the App Store (15% or 30% or whatever it is this week). So you're suggesting app developers charge less for side loaded apps: isn't that just accepting that the apple fees are fair?

The thought I had was get users off the App Store. Once they are off, then developers could raise prices. But also developers would have more freedom to sell stuff as they like, without Apple's rules. Epic has its own audience, its own customers and it should be allowed to do what it wants with its software. Instead Apple has control over what Epic can do, merely because Apple sold the hardware to the customer. When I started using personal computers, the manufacturer of the computer had no say in what software I was allowed to use. Nor did it deliberately set hoops that software authors had to jump through. Microsoft did that of course, but not the manufacturer.

They'll probably tie it to your icloud region and billing address. Sure, bring your European phone to the US, but you won't be able to access any paid Apple services because it only offers you the European subscriptions and they can't be bought with a US CC. Maybe even Apple Pay will not take your debit cards.

Eh... Android has turned out to be a bit of a fraud. The great "open-source" OS that would free us all from vendor and telco tyranny has spectacularly failed to do so. Android users still wait months or years or forever for each telco to dribble out a hacked, proprietary version of Android for every phone model, one at a time. I wanted Android to be competitive, because Apple does dick developers and "partners" over. But it's just as much of a shitshow, if not worse.

It being required by law does not guarantee that it's possible.

I'm pretty sure I cannot sideload on iOS, unless you count using a free developer account to load self-compiled applications whose certificates are only valid for a few days.