Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 398 posts

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

#181

Post by scarface74 »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #21

Was it a mistake for Apply to set the precedent that they will not take action against large tech firms that do this? Regardless of what is a 'fair' fee, what happens when the handful of apps that generate the vast majority of revenue move their transactions away from the marketplace? What is Apple/Google's next move?

They don’t “take action” against any firm that does this. You’ve always been allowed to have subscriptions off the platform you just couldn’t link to the website.

Unless you consider ACloudGuru for instance “large”.

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

#182

Post by sjwright »

stcredzero wrote: post #167
sjwright wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a company town is also a good analogy. Maybe even a better one, though it is a lot easier and cheaper to switch mobile platforms than it is to pick up your whole life. To expand your analogy, nothing stops you from owning homes in two different towns at the same time. (Nobody is forcing you to carry just one mobile phone, even though most people do.) And in this company town, yes they own all the stores and play…

(Nobody is forcing you to carry just one mobile phone, even though most people do.) So now we're getting somewhere. This is the height of the wall around this particular walled garden. Now let me ask this: What percentage of the population would even consider owning two smartphones? That's how close to an idealized monopoly this walled garden is. So granted, it's not a monopoly in an idealized sense. But we now quant…

Imagine you live in a town with two similarly good cable TV providers. Each has a monopoly on selling HBO subscriptions through their particular service.

Most people have one cable TV subscription. Which means if you want HBO on your cable TV box, you can only subscribe through your current cable TV provider. You can call this a monopoly if you like, doesn't make it wrong or illegal.

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

#183

Post by wallacoloo »

ancorevard wrote: post #173

World wide product distribution for only 30% is cheap. I see a lot of Sellers whining, but the Customers love this arrangement. Take a look at iOS satisfaction rate among its users VS the other phone vendors.

> Take a look at iOS satisfaction rate among its users VS the other phone vendors.

Huh? But don’t the other phone vendors also offer worldwide product distribution (I.e. the Google Play Store)? How is the difference between iOS satisfaction vs other vendor satisfaction indicative that this is a cheap solution for world wide product distribution?

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

#185

Post by pentae »

scarface74 wrote: post #158
pentae wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though it is a lot easier and cheaper to switch mobile platforms Try telling that to your customers. "Yeah sure just sell your phone and buy an Android device to use our app". And having them use Safari? Yeah right. Apple doesn't even provide push notifications for web apps. Have you ever wondered why that is? The fact is, if your customer has an iOS device, you must include Apple in the transaction and pay them 30…

Seeing how websites have abused push notifications I don’t blame them. A happy medium would be only to allow push notifications for websites that the user has saved to their home screen.

That could work. Though i'd argue by now users know what they know what they are getting themselves into when accepting a push notification - and the notifications pane in settings for disabling them has been working just fine.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

philihp wrote: post #69
soneca wrote: post #33

Why call it "tax" if it is a fee? The article shows numbers based on a 30% fee when it explicitly says it is actually 15%. "meaning Apple was making around $700,000 by doing nothing other than allowing Netflix to offer subscriptions in its app" It seems a bit unfair also. I have no horse in this race, but the author seems to have

"Apple Tax" is a well defined colloquial term to refer to the markup Apple makes on its products because of their company branding and product reputation. I wouldn't credit the author with inventing this term—rather they are borrowing it for something that is actually more like a tax. When there's a transaction in the Apple domain, Apple levies a tax/fee/toll/duty. This isn't going away, and it's going to be heavy hi…

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by sjwright »

pentae wrote: post #179
sjwright wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact is, if your customer has an iOS device, you must include Apple in the transaction and pay them 30% This is false. What Netflix and Epic are doing is completely within the terms Apple has laid out. The only thing they can't do is direct their iOS app customers elsewhere for the purpose of a monetary transaction. And it's not limited to big corps. There are countless examples of small developers doing the ex…

Except 1Password is a huge and very well known product, and it could be argued that the software takes places outside the app and therefore is exempt from IAP.

AgileBits are a very small private company with just one noteworthy product and fewer than 100 employees. Calling them "huge and very well known" is objectively absurd.

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

#188

Post by Steko »

ancorevard wrote: post #173

World wide product distribution for only 30% is cheap. I see a lot of Sellers whining, but the Customers love this arrangement. Take a look at iOS satisfaction rate among its users VS the other phone vendors.

It's not the distribution so much as the hundreds of millions of paying customers.

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

#189

Post by dehrmann »

scarface74 wrote: post #170
dehrmann wrote: post #99

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 car…

Spotify stopped allowing subscriptions on iOS a while ago.

True. Their choices were that, taking a ~loss on these users, or charging more. All put them at a disadvantage compared to Apple.

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

#190

Post by zerohp »

sjwright wrote: post #162
pentae wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though it is a lot easier and cheaper to switch mobile platforms Try telling that to your customers. "Yeah sure just sell your phone and buy an Android device to use our app". And having them use Safari? Yeah right. Apple doesn't even provide push notifications for web apps. Have you ever wondered why that is? The fact is, if your customer has an iOS device, you must include Apple in the transaction and pay them 30…

You're complaining about the experience from a developer, which is not what this analogy is about. No, Wal-Mart isn't allowed to run their own business in a company town. As for push notifications—it's not surprising that Apple doesn't allow the HTTP version because it would be chaos for battery life. Besides, any website can offer a totally free native app that simply performs push notifications for your site. You d…

Not only is it chaos for battery life, web push notifications are almost entirely spam. The web should have never added them in the first place. I’m glad that Apple stands against that crap.
Post reply on HN