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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

#341

Post by ceejayoz »

mcfedr wrote: post #292
neotek wrote: 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

It's not uncommon for the terms to require an explicit cancellation. People who try to cancel gym memberships by just letting their payment card expire find this out when they get sent to collections.

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

#342

Post by habith »

peteretep wrote: post #314
contactlight11 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use instead of PayPal? Just enter your credit card on every site you buy something from? Definitely curious, because Google Pay and Amazon Payments are the only alternatives I can think of and neither are as widely adopted as PayPall.

Yep, credit card everywhere and trust the fraud teams to save me. Only had a single fraudulent transaction once ever.

Be careful, a few fraudulent transactions and the teams would start thinking you're just trying to get out of paying your bills instead of helping you out.

Lots of banks have virtual cards now that you can generate for one time use or for subscription services with a dollar/expiration date limits. I highly recommend seeing if your bank has such a feature.

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

#343

Post by perseusprime11 »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #308
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…

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?

Exactly this point! They should charge more on the lines of affiliate fee or transaction fees. 5% is what they should get in an ideal world.

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

#344

Post by gnicholas »

jen729w wrote: post #296
neotek wrote: 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 .

The Netflix cancellation process is also 3 steps, for what it’s worth:

Click “more”

Click “account”

Click “cancel”

Off course, this isn’t the same as having a centralized location for managing all subscriptions, but at least in this case the cancellation process is the same number of steps.

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

#345

Post by Marsymars »

83457 wrote: post #210
bkraz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recently canceled and was surprised they didn't ask why. My reason was that the selection of content has changed dramatically. When I first signed up, I could choose a movie that I had in mind. Now, the selection of movies on Netflix streaming is extremely bleak. It's almost entirely TV shows, and about half of it is Netflix-produced. The quality of it is fine, I just don't want TV shows. I want access to the…

"I want access to the majority of movies ever produced" Appears that will never happen.

Not never. In the long run, the majority of movies ever produced will be in the public domain.

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

#346

Post by Marsymars »

tialaramex wrote: post #118
chrisan wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention this new(?) tactic with "free trials" that automatically turn into a subscription. I was trying out a bunch of weather apps (why is is so hard for a simple concise app with a radar without a bunch of needless fluff/wasted space) and 1 of them automatically turned into $99/year after 3 or 7 days (I forget). The app didn't even work and would almost _always_ have the time wrong making the weather HUD als…

Europe (maybe just the UK but I think it was EU-wide) banned claiming something is "free" if in fact you must sign up to pay money. You can tell people what it'll cost and ask for a card, or, you can say it is free and not ask up front (you can ask later if you want but having not given you a card for the free trial if the customer has lost interest they're not going to give you one later)

Quebec has a similar law. As a result, Canadian services with a format of "free one month trial and then $x for the next twelve months" tend to be available in Quebec as "$x for the first thirteen months".

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

#348

Post by aarbor989 »

I’m surprised it took them so long to do this. I forget which app it was (maybe Spotify) but I remember them offloading the tax to the consumer by having a 15% higher subscription fee from within iOS. From a consumer standpoint I find the iOS subscription doesn’t add any value. Have you tried finding where to cancel subscriptions from within iOS? It’s buried under so many menu clicks it’s impossible to find without searching the web for help

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

#349

Post by nolok »

habith wrote: post #338
w1nt3rmu4e wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 30% is unjustifiable. Period. If we're talking cost, the cost of hosting software and payment processor fees are closer to 7-8%, 99% of which are on the payment side. The cost of Apple's gatekeeping -- their review bureaucracy -- is entirely their own doing and benefits no one. Software can and should be sold directly. There is zero justification for a middleman with digital delivery. They say it's for consumers…

> The cost of Apple's gatekeeping -- their review bureaucracy -- is entirely their own doing and benefits no one. That was actually the reason I ditched my Android and switched to an iPhone a few years back. After writing an app for both platforms and seeing how terrifyingly easy it was to get on the Play store ($25 and 4 hours after uploading the apk) vs Apple's more rigorous review process which took close to a mon…

> That was actually the reason I ditched my Android and switched to an iPhone a few years back. After writing an app for both platforms and seeing how terrifyingly easy it was to get on the Play store ($25 and 4 hours after uploading the apk) vs Apple's more rigorous review process which took close to a month, checked out our company's DUNS number and _actually_ tested/used the app.

An optional appstore with verifications is one (great) thing, making it mandatory is another. We have the entirery of desktop computers history to know that. That's like saying "I ditched Linux/OSX/Windows because they allowed me to install things not from their package manager/store".

And if what you meant is "I enjoy a well curated app store", well the truth is that apple's store is not well curated at all, that many apps are being abusive anyway especially from the big ones, and that there are several alternative stores for Android if you want one.

I just can't agree with "I want apple to make it impossible for me to be in control of what runs on my device even if they disagree", and I think both stores are absolutely terrible so I don't get the whole "I ditched terrible for execrable".

> Also the cluster hell that is the forced Android permission system and how intrusive the most basic ones are vs. Apple's opt-in "Read contacts? (Yes/No)" while using the app are why I'd never go back.

That hasn't been the case for quite some time, apps now ask for granular permissions and they do so when they need it the first time. There are still some holdouts that don't upgrade to the newer api on purpose but that's why google is bumping the minimum api version to publish on the store soon and force those leftover to clean up.

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

#350

Post by scarface74 »

wolco wrote: post #255
scarface74 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Apple has thus done the world a favor. The last thing we need is more cross platform not quite native apps... But as far as $99, between my $300 a year Linux Academy subscription, $144 a year JetBrains Resharper subscription and the money I spend on Udemy, $99 a year is nothing.

You are my target customer. Willing to throw away hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on licenses and willing brag about it.

It’s not bragging. It’s career development.
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