Microsoft tried and failed because of Google’s anti-competitive business practices. Hence the whole point of my call to regulate them!
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Epic Games Has Paid Over $100 Million in Legal Fees to Fight Apple's App Store Rules
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They failed because no developer would make big apps for them
The exact same as the fire phone
because it wasn’t worthwhile for them to invest that money into making apps for a product that most wouldn’t buy
Exactly. Google used apps like YouTube as a weapon against Microsoft to maintain their own dominant position in the mobile OS market. Google (rightly) saw Microsoft as a threat to their dominance in this market and both deliberately withheld and deliberately broke YouTube clients on windows phone to prevent windows phone users from being able to access the YouTube app service. Google knew that the power it had in its services could be used to destroy a competitor in the mobile os market, and they did so.
Google also gave away Android for free by subsidising it from profits generated in the advertising market. That distorted the market for licensable mobile operating systems in Google’s favour.
Bro I don’t know what you’re on but Apple’s in app purchase rules were illegal and now as developers we can use something like stripe to pay only 2.9%. You can continue using 15% to Apple. It’s about choice. In regards to alternative app stores I agree with you no need to say any more on that. The article talks about in app purchases as well and you have not replied
I wouldn’t count on it only being 2.9% for long. Either Apple wins their appeal and everything goes back to normal or Apple changes the App Store business model and you are potentially paying 2.9% to stripe and a bunch of fixed service fees to Apple.
No big company would make apps for it
Even banking apps
Sports apps
Because most people wouldn’t switch from android or iOS
That’s the problem because of how the market in the west is set up
There is nothing wrong with giving your product away for free as long as you have a company that competes with you because then it’s not a monopoly & that is how google & Apple try & get around every business decision by pointing to each other & saying look we have competition
They are not winning that appeal because they would have to say how it hurts Apple’s business model without sounding greedy
They are not going to change the App Store model because then that would hurt there overall business model
I think the DMA shows that Apple are willing to change the business model of the App Store if compelled to do so by the courts. Maintaining or increasing the revenue from the store is the key.
The big difference is this time it actually affects IAP fee
Because now they have to include payment links that doesn’t require IAP so getting around the 30% fee
Then the judge telling them to get lost with the 27% figure so if Apple are forced to make it 12% or under it will kill the IAP business for them going forward
That is why they haven’t implemented it yet & refused to compile with it
How dare they want control over their own platform. They should definitely be forced to do what others want.
Which is why we are speculating on how Apple might change the App Store business model, and one such option is to a per service fee. So instead of developers paying Apple a flat percentage fee that covers all of the services offered by the App Store they pay a flat fee for each service individually. It could be something like 50p download fee per user, per app, per year, a £500 app review fee, a £500 notorisation fee, a £5000 annual developer tools fee etc. etc. Possibly something similar to what we see with the CTF in the EU. I’m just making numbers up I’ve got no idea what Apple would have to set them at to maintain revenue.
If the current business model is deemed illegal or they are forced to change then they absolutely will change the model. Apple isn't a charity, the App Store is valuable IP, and they will absolutely monetize it to the maximum extent allowable by law.
It's estimated that bandwidth costs for the App Store are somewhere between $50-$100 million a year. If you are correct that all paid apps switch away from IAP (which I seriously doubt, but will grant you for discussion purposes) either the developer program cost will go up, bandwidth costs will start getting charged, or other fees will be added. Apple isn't a charity.
Small quibble, the judge slammed the 27% not because of the percentage, but how it was calculated (i.e. they didn't provide any evidence as to why 27% was a fair number). If Apple does a bottom up analysis, says things like for example, Epic has said they're going to charge 12%, we think the convenience of the IAP model is worth 8% (and provides data to back that up), it is entirely possible that the judge says 20% is fine.
Also, even if Apple is forced to accept 12% it won't "kill" their business, it will make it less profitable
Then that will kill the iOS App Store model by making it less appealing for developers
This could all be avoided if they change the figure to 12% for IAP & 12% for payment links
Then the payment links would become redundant
Well that’s just a price that us end users might have to pay by forcing a change to Apple’s model. We might go from an abundance of free apps to most apps being paid for. Who knows!
There will always be consequences and we won’t know what they are until they appear.
Let’s not descend into Trumpian logic thinking that blowing things up only results in positive consequences 😛
I think to a certain extent. It’s a balance. I’d argue they chose meeting each quarter’s expectations over the long term strategic good for the company - and its shareholders.
I think it’s fair to say that Apple’s third party developers mostly despise them now.
Apple has shown that they don’t respect them and just see them as a resource to be milked.
There is a world where Apple:
- could’ve been agile and realised that the 30% fee (for big successful apps) was untenable now.
- explained this to their shareholders telling them that they needed to make some concessions as it was important to keep devs on side.
- because Apple wanted their devs to be enthusiastic about implementing their new platform features and indeed their new platforms.
Instead we have a world where Apple saw the iPhone business maturing and slowly declining and used the service revenue - largely the App Store - to keep meeting their figures.
Now devs will likely do the bare minimum that consumers and businesses expect & what Apple’s App Store rules say.
We have a world where barely none of Apple’s third party devs helped Apple with Vision Pro.
And where Apple just thought it was their right to keep on taking their cut & to set the terms of their cut.
Now - in the USA - this is gone (I don’t think Apple’s appeal will be successful) and it’s all their own fault for prioritising their own needs each immediate quarter over everything else.
And as we are entering the age of genai, Apple seems especially vulnerable. Because guess which company chose not to invest in genai properly and is spectacularly behind on it?
It’ll be easier for google to get to the iPhone’s hardware quality and combine it with a Gemini product that acts as an incredible personal assistant thst becomes a must have product, than it will for Apple to bring Siri up to this level.
And/or google can achieve this with Samsung.
So I’m not sure if Apple’s future will be as rosy as the last 20 years or so. And they only have themselves to blame because they prioritised rinsing the iPhone and App Store for as much $ as they could over everything else.
Because they made up the 27% figure to stop people from using payment links
That’s why she told them to do one
Because they are greedy greedy greedy 👍🏻
If it’s not going to make a big difference as you say then why are they fighting it & not coming back with a figure?
Don’t care about bandwidth it’s not a problem for Microsoft to charge 12% to developers
As Warren Buffett says Tim Cook has made more money for Berkshire than I have ever done now what does that tell you
Developer disdain for Apple is equally matched with consumer disdain for developers I’d say.
Obviously they think more money is better than less money. And, they seem to think the court's order they weren't complying was wrong. While I disagree with that assessment, if they truly think the judge is wrong, then maybe it makes sense to fight it rather than "coming back with a figure."
Maybe Apple has decided 1) they have a good chance to win the appeal or 2) the chance of winning on appeal, even if small, is worth forgoing whatever percentage of revenue they are giving up in the meantime or 3) they are planning to come back with a figure, but need more time than a week to do so, since the judge clearly wants a number that is backed up by data. Or maybe a combination of all of the above. We don't know what Apple is thinking.
It doesn't matter what you do or don't care about. It's what Apple does. Again, Apple isn't a charity, they are going to charge what they think things are worth unless they get told they can't. And if they can't charge what they want to charge because a court says so, then they're going to find ways to try to make up that difference, or at least reduce the difference.
Monetising stuff to the maximum extent is exactly what kills companies in the long term.
See Adobe, which is hated by pretty much everyone at this point; see Windows, which is almost universally hated too, precisely because of how Microsoft tries to monetise it (by pushing users to use Microsoft accounts, news services, personalised ads etc.). Or HP with their cartridge subscriptions.
Do you really want to see Apple dying on that path?
I hope they charge 30% on bandwidth. I'll delete and re-download anything Epic related 1,000 times per day.
They tried to add fees and it was deemed illegal. Yes no doubt Apple will come up with something to get more of our money for in app purchases. Hopefully not! It belongs to the developer!
IMHO, they should have just saved all that money and built better products so they would sell more even with the 30% apple fee. The mentality that you can FORCE a person or company to change the way they do business (which you agreed to originally when you wanted access to their marketplace) still surprises me.
This has 'cut your nose off to spite your face' written all over it.
This has 'cut your nose off to spite your face' written all over it.
No, but I also don't think governments should intervene to save companies from themselves.
It actually wasn't deemed illegal. The court originally said that it could charge fees, but then after seeing Apple's "compliance" said that as punishment, they couldn't charge a commission. Even if that part of the ruling stands (and I'm of the opinion that it won't), there is nothing preventing Apple from say, raising the price of the developer account, etc.