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

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

#91

Post by hombre_fatal »

ken wrote: post #70
briandear wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they do handle your billing, sales taxes (in every jurisdiction,) cancelations. They also deal with chargebacks as well. While a Netflix type company is perfectly capable of doing it themselves, it’s a stretch to say “ZERO” value or devs or consumers. As a consumer, so can go into my App Store account and instantly cancel any subscription. Try that with Angie’s List or any of the numerous newspapers (including…

Don't payment processors like Stripe handle billing, sales taxes across jurisdictions, cancellations, chargebacks, etc? And they charge 1/10th of what Apple does.

Stripe is only business-side.

As a customer, I don't want to punch my CC info into every website. Netflix can get away with it because they're a ubiquitous household staple.

But for almost every other service, being able to manage recurring payments from the app store interface is a big deal to me. Recurring charges are a nightmare otherwise. Being able to integrate with the app store is why I was willing to subscribe to most other apps at all.

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

#92

Post by username3 »

atombender wrote: post #54
ianai wrote: post #51

I’m devaluing this disagreement. Tell me one reason that we at the consumer level should care whether Apple or Netflix win this one? At my level, I see the smartphone market dominated by Apple and Google. If you don’t like what those two do then you can’t buy a smartphone. They own something like 99.9999% of the market. This is basically super large corporation vs large corporation. Wake me up for the fight to break…

This isn't about consumers. This article is about Netflix's business. Sure, new consumers of the iOS app will have to subscribe in a different way, but this has a minimal impact on users.

Netflix subscriptions are cheaper by 20% when retailers discount Apple iTunes gift cards 20%.

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

#93

Post by admax88q »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #37
writepub wrote: post #30

It's ludicrous for Apple to state they somehow increased business for Netflix, because they allowed "sign-up" via iOS. That's like Google claiming they allowed sign-up via chrome, or AT&T claiming they allowed sign up via their Network. Apple adds ZERO value via the app store, both for devs and for the consumers.

What Apple adds is non-zero. As the parent comment points out, Apple offers discovery, billing, and distribution. The App Store is a single (theoretically trusted) place for iOS users to search for apps. Let's not forget that, at least in theory, Apple curates the App Store. Neither Chrome nor AT&T does that in any substantial way. Furthermore, Apple's business model is different from Google/Android's. Android can be…

Google curates the web via search and via chrome with malicious page warnings.

Not 100% reliable, but they do effectively curate.

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

#94

Post by jedieaston »

writepub wrote: post #30

It's ludicrous for Apple to state they somehow increased business for Netflix, because they allowed "sign-up" via iOS. That's like Google claiming they allowed sign-up via chrome, or AT&T claiming they allowed sign up via their Network. Apple adds ZERO value via the app store, both for devs and for the consumers.

You don't have to get your credit card out and hop to another website. Just download app, pick plan, and touch ID. Done.

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

#95

Post by zdragnar »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #37
writepub wrote: post #30

It's ludicrous for Apple to state they somehow increased business for Netflix, because they allowed "sign-up" via iOS. That's like Google claiming they allowed sign-up via chrome, or AT&T claiming they allowed sign up via their Network. Apple adds ZERO value via the app store, both for devs and for the consumers.

What Apple adds is non-zero. As the parent comment points out, Apple offers discovery, billing, and distribution. The App Store is a single (theoretically trusted) place for iOS users to search for apps. Let's not forget that, at least in theory, Apple curates the App Store. Neither Chrome nor AT&T does that in any substantial way. Furthermore, Apple's business model is different from Google/Android's. Android can be…

> Apple offers discovery, billing, and distribution

In the context of Netflix, I'm not sure that they're actually getting any value from any of those things from Apple, since they already have well-established pretty much everything in that area.

I mean, sure, maybe someone had never heard of Netflix until they saw it in the app store, but I'm going to guess that number of people is well below even a blip in Netflix's revenue (especially given the universal 30% cut). Likewise, Netflix is pumping more bits around the internet than most other companies; distributing apps is only a benefit for them because they literally don't have an alternative option for iOS.

For other, smaller companies, I would agree that it is non-zero, and I would also argue that 30% is way too much.

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

#96

Post by ndnxhs »

Netflix only needs apple for distribution because apple has locked down the system so much that you are forced to go through them. Apple has added very little value and we had better systems before where you could just visit a URL and view content without needing Microsoft for distribution.

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

#97

Post by IshKebab »

tanilama wrote: post #90
makecheck wrote: post #66

I find it hard to blame anyone for leaving any store when there has been almost nothing of value added in years and things are even regressing. That 30% should have gone a lot further; after 10 years, I can’t even use two different search-and-sort criteria at once to find new apps (and I refuse to sit there and scroll through offensively-bad lists of useless results, much less buy them). I am however not surprised by…

My thoughts as well. How could Apple's search so bad? If it indeed brings billions a year, why wouldn't they spend that money to improve the functionality of this revenue powerhouse? Apple tax should be stopped, people are paying penalty to use their sub par software, this is as ridiculous as it gets.

Because they don't have to. It may not meet the legal definition of a monopoly but a monopoly it is.

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

#98

Post by ndnxhs »

na85 wrote: post #86
anonytrary wrote: post #84

The main reason I find app stores useful is that they are a third party data aggregator. You can see ratings, downloads, reviews and other statistics very easily. That does help me as someone deciding what apps I should download. That said, Netflix is a company I've grown to trust. I have no reason to look at Netflix's app statistics in the app store. I have no incentive to make personal transactions with Netflix thr…

Do you really believe the ratings and reviews are useful? Most of the reviews I've seen are obvious shills, or else useless "works ok" reviews with a 5 star rating

I don't think I have ever found the reviews on google play to be useful. I switched to fdroid which has no review or rating system and I dont miss it a bit. I find its usually easier to just open the app and see if it works.

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

#99

Post by dehrmann »

The Apple Tax is especially hard on Spotify since Apple launched Apple Music (previously, Spotify passed the 30% on to customers, but $13 vs $10 for similar services doesn't work). Both services are $10 per month. It's well-publicized that Spotify pays out 70% to labels, leaving nothing to run the service.

Full disclosure: I used to work for Spotify. My personal take on the fee was that 2%-3% is the floor (credit card processing), but Apple could charge up to 5% and reasonably justify the value-add without risking price gouging or anti-competitive claims.

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

#100

Post by joshtynjala »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #73
lathiat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple policies explicitly forbid this. While you can use subscriptions from on the website, the app cannot in any way suggest that you do that, nor can it link to a page that directly (one click away) lets you do it.

It sound weird to me as an Indian. Apple supports almost zero debit cards in India and no net banking. All the apps provide 10s of different ways to pay inside the app including amazon, uber, zomato(food delivery app) and their competitors. I don’t know about Netflix but still I can bet we can add credit card inside app.

Apple allows physical items or services to be purchased without Apple's payment infrastructure. The strict rules and 30% fee apply to "digital" subscriptions/items only.
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