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Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

techcrunch.com

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Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#11

Post by pmart123 »

skh wrote: post #2

I wonder how much money it costs Apple to handle subscription payments/cancellations for Netflix and other streaming services. I prefer to handle subscription through Apple because cancelling such services is never difficult. I don’t know how it is on other countries but cancelling services in the U.S. can be a hellish experience. Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ co…

A couple other advantages is it is likely more secure than having your credit card stored across many sites (although Stripe solves that too), and if your card expires, you only have to update one thing.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#12

Post by morpheuskafka »

todd3834 wrote: post #4
skh wrote: post #2

I wonder how much money it costs Apple to handle subscription payments/cancellations for Netflix and other streaming services. I prefer to handle subscription through Apple because cancelling such services is never difficult. I don’t know how it is on other countries but cancelling services in the U.S. can be a hellish experience. Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ co…

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prorated refund for time on the old plan. You can cancel with ONE tap (and a confirmation)--cancelling does not interfere with what you've already paid for, and it tells you exactly what date you've paid through. All auth is by Touch/Face ID.

I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#13

Post by morpheuskafka »

skh wrote: post #2

I wonder how much money it costs Apple to handle subscription payments/cancellations for Netflix and other streaming services. I prefer to handle subscription through Apple because cancelling such services is never difficult. I don’t know how it is on other countries but cancelling services in the U.S. can be a hellish experience. Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ co…

And it makes iTunes gift cards really nice when they can be used to pay for anything under the sun, as long as it has an iOS app.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#14

Post by JadoJodo »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #12
todd3834 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prora…

> I've never seen a simpler and more straightforward billing UX as Apple's.

Settings -> -> Subscriptions

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#15

Post by [deleted] »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #12
todd3834 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prora…

[deleted]

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#16

Post by skh »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #12
todd3834 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

You go to the App Store (logical place to look), tap your profile pic (a standard way of communicating "my account"), and tap your name in the menu. You'll arrive at the Account Settings page which has an obviously labeled Subscriptions button. Once there, subscriptions are neatly sorted into active and expired. Clicking on a subscription instantly shows you all options, you can change among them and get a full prora…

I don’t believe this is correct on iOS and it isn’t correct on the Apple TV. In iOS you need to go to

Settings -> iTunes & App Store -> tap on your Apple ID at the top of the screen -> tap on view Apple ID -> scroll to subscriptions and tap on that

It’s not obvious or intuitive in my opinion.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#17

Post by sundvor »

skh wrote: post #7
todd3834 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an Apple fan all around. (Even own a homepod). But I have to disagree with “cancelling is easy”. Cancelling a subscription on iOS is so hidden that I can’t say it’s easy. I hope they change this.

My experience is that it is easy once you find the right screen. A Google search always leads me to the right screen. Apple could be better at making the location more transparent but they couldn’t make the act of canceling, once you get to the right location, easier.

Anything is easy once you know how to do it. :P

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#18

Post by kraftman »

MrMember wrote: post #5
toufiqbarhamov wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many things I’d agree, but to their credit Netflix has always made it trivially easy to cancel. They’re one of the few modern IT companies that seem to go out of the way to make joining and leaving fair and easily comprehensible. Now if they’d just make that autoplaying a goddamned option!

I was kind of surprised when I canceled my Netflix account. I had a laundry list of complaints I was going to put in the "why are you canceling" box but they never gave me one. Making it easy and painless to cancel is one of the few things they're still doing right.

What were your reasons?

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#19

Post by wand3r »

The Apple store seems good for small apps because the “tax” pays for discovery/marketing, distribution, billing & payment, lends credibility to the application, etc. This is especially true for single purchases.

Recurring revenue is a much different proposition— even for small or first time apps. A player like netflix which handles it’s own marketing, payment and all other ancilliary services doesn’t need to anything the apple store is offering other than distribution. I would understand if apple took $1 or some one time download fee but to regularly claim 30% of Netflix revenue seems like a stretch. While I think apple could make the case that they signed up through iOS, i think it is equally fair for Netflix to disable this option.

Re: Netflix stops paying the ‘Apple tax’ on its $853M in annual iOS revenue

#20

Post by Laforet »

skh wrote: post #2

I wonder how much money it costs Apple to handle subscription payments/cancellations for Netflix and other streaming services. I prefer to handle subscription through Apple because cancelling such services is never difficult. I don’t know how it is on other countries but cancelling services in the U.S. can be a hellish experience. Personally, I’d be willing to pay the “Apple Tax” on top of a subscription services’ co…

From what I heard from ios developers, the cost is a resounding "nothing"; any cancelled or fraudulent orders are simply taken out of Apple's monthly remittance to you. Details are usually wittheld for privacy reasons.

It may be great for consumers but it's been a constant headache for devs and publishers since the beginning of the App Store because it's very hard to work out the source of any shrinkage. Netflix is probably better positioned to pursue these cases but for a lot of indie devs the cost of investigation far outweights any benefit so they have to accept it as a part of the business cost on top of the 30% already charged by AAPL.

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