Apple and Google have agreed to certain changes to make their app stores more fair to developers to appease the UK’s markets regulator.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that the two tech firms have agreed to make suggested changes to how their app stores operate to impove their transparency and fairness to businesses and developers.

This marks the first commitment from the two tech giants the CMA has secured since designating them as having “strategic market status” in smartphone and apps late last year.

This status allocation allows the CMA to have specific conditions for the tech giants’ behaviours and policies to enhance faireness in the market.

The commitments will see Apple and Google review apps in a fair, objective, and transparent way, ensuring that they do not discriminate against apps which directly compete with their own. The tech giants also committed to ranking apps in a fair, objective, and transparent way, and to not favour their own apps.

They must also ensure they safeguard data they gather from developers, and ensure that develoerps can more easily request interoperable access to features and functionality when it comes to Apple’s mobile operating systems.

The CMA will now closely monitor Apple and Google’s rollout of these changes and will report publicly on its findings.

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“Following designation of Apple and Google’s mobile platforms in October last year, the CMA has moved swiftly to secure a package of commitments from Apple and Google that will boost the UK’s app economy, giving developers the opportunity and confidence they need to invest and innovate.

“The ability to secure immediate commitments from Apple and Google reflects the unique flexibility of the UK digital markets competition regime and offers a practical route to swiftly address the concerns we’ve identified.

“These are important first steps while we continue to work on a broad range of additional measures to improve Apple and Google’s app store services in the UK, for example by enabling more choice and innovation in digital wallets, boosting the UK’s fintech sector and potentially supporting the roll out of digital IDs.”

Further, the CMA is seeking views on the proposed commitments to be submitted by 3 March.