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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

#301
post #292
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you replied to, but yes. I can't think of many subscriptions I have that I wouldn't happily pay more for if it meant having one central place to manage them all, overseen by a company that I fully believe gives a shit about my privacy.

Is your bank not one place? You can just block the payments

If you block a payment with your bank or credit card the other end can attempt to charge you anyway. You can sometimes dispute and lose and still pay.

It also can trigger negative repercussions if you do have an ongoing relationship with the company, like IIRC Steam locks your whole account if you go that path on the basis that it indicates fraud to be blocked (not just that you wanted to cancel)

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

#302
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you replied to, but yes. I can't think of many subscriptions I have that I wouldn't happily pay more for if it meant having one central place to manage them all, overseen by a company that I fully believe gives a shit about my privacy.

Other than the slightly obscure menu option to get to your list of subscriptions, how nice is the process to cancel an Apple subscription? Any of them – an app, Netflix, whatever. 1. Navigate to list of subscriptions. 2. Find desired subscription in list. 3. Click cancel. Nobody else does that and it is so nice .

On Android:

Play Store > Menu > Subscriptions > select subscription > Cancel Subscription

Seems pretty similar to me.

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

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK that's not how it works. For example go look up Microsoft's monopoly. The commonly held believe is Microsoft was declared to have a monopoly on personal computer OSes but that is false. Microsoft was found to have a monopoly on OSes for Intel based machines. So by that same logic Apple has a monopoly on OSes for A series (A10, A11, A12) based smartphones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft…

Can a company have a monopoly over its own products? That doesn't make sense.

iOS apps aren't Apple's products.

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

#305
Why is Apple allowing this?:

“3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality…”

My app was previously rejected because I had to built in In-App purchasing.

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

#306
post #305

Why is Apple allowing this?: “3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality…” My app was previously rejected because I had to built in In-App purchasi…

You're not allowed to use other payment methods inside your app. You CAN require someone to separately browse to your website and sign up there, and incidentally use that same login in your app. Directly linking to the online payment form from your app is not allowed either.

This is how other apps like e.g. Amazon Kindle work

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

#307
post #305

Why is Apple allowing this?: “3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality…” My app was previously rejected because I had to built in In-App purchasi…

You're not allowed to use other payment methods inside your app. You CAN require someone to separately browse to your website and sign up there, and incidentally use that same login in your app. Directly linking to the online payment form from your app is not allowed either. This is how other apps like e.g. Amazon Kindle work

That explains a lot, I was redirecting to the website from a "Subscribe" link in the app. Maybe if I just called the link "Sign up" it would've been a different story. Anyway, I like having the subscription option in the app, it makes it much easier for the user to sign up, without the need to go to the website and fill in the forms.

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

#308

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…

I think more to the point, the 30% cut for Apple isn't justified because the content isn't delivered via the App Store. 30% of in app purchases that are downloaded from the App Store is one thing, but 30% of Netflix fees is crazy when all Apple is doing is hosting the app itself. Apple isn't hosting Netflix's content, why should they get a cut of that?

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

#309

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.

But Apple doesn't distribute Netflix's content. Netflix does all of that themselves. All Apple does is host a free app. The content is still hosted on Netflix servers.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past, you bought software in a box from a retailer who took a margin as high as 50%. After you pay for manufacturing and distribution (shipping shrink-wrapped boxes of CD-ROMs, multilingual manuals and a unique serial number to retailers in Alaska and Singapore is definitely not free) a developer would be lucky to end up with one third of the retail price in their pocket. The Apple app store is actually a huge…

The app store didn't replace offline retail, the internet did. Software was sold online before the app store came along just fine. With app-stores we are back in retailer country: convenient as a customer but the manufacturer has to pay a fee to be boxed and put on the digital shelf.

And there is only one shelf! This is way worst than retailer country.
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