561–570 of 688 posts
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But Spotify can’t even tell users how to upgrade to premium according to Apple’s rules. The best they can say is “You can’t upgrade to Premium in the app. We know, it’s not ideal.”
If that is their argument, then it's pretty weak IMO.
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" There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice." Competition laws place limitations on what a business can do. They're not free to sell or price entirely as they please. In this case Spotify are arguing that Apple is using its dominance of the smartphone m…
Well, that is a separate and good point, and very much a political one. And you can never tell with the EU. As I said in a comment far below here, it's a funny thing, how to define anticompetitive and monopoly practices, depending on how you frame the scope of the market. See Peter Thiel's book for a chapter on this. You could say that Apple has a monopoly over developers building apps and providing their services to…
Market share argument:
Android has 71% market share in the EU, as of February 2019 - compared to iOS's 21%. [1]
Ease of customer switching argument:
If Apple pressed too much in a way that harmed consumers, there are many other cheaper alternative Android phones vs. iOS to which they can easily port their number over (say what you want about ISPs and Telecoms, I find this to be pretty easy in the US - unless you signed an unreasonably stifling contract. Admittedly I'm unsure how difficult this would be in most of the EU.)
Supply-Side Price elasticity argument:
In theory, if the 30% cut was too high, developers wouldn't want to develop on the iOS platform, and would instead focus resources on developing on Android; the specific cut would be at an equilibrium point that enough developers would find profitable, and would still provide choice in the app marketplace for customers.
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I think Apple is going to find itself standing alone by the time the dust settles on this issue. Their 30% tax is a disservice to its own customers, not just app publishers. Apple tries to counter that the problem is Spotify . It's Spotify that is money-hungry, Apple claims: Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work. The only problem with this argument is that Spotify is just one e…
Apple won't find itself standing alone. Other major distributors like Google and Valve are both happy to take 30% off the top of app sales too, and if the chance comes to speak up in support, they will. But the difference is both of them can be circumvented by competitors, for instance Epic Games, who is challenging both. (Epic is launching an Android store soon.) Apple can't be, and that's likely to be the crux of a…
epic is not the saviour here, they're dumping cash to bring shitty console practices to the pc ecosystem, namely storefront exclusives
I love how brazen this letter is. > Apple’s approach has always been to grow the pie. Apple's approach has always been to grow it's own pie. They have never been even remotely interested in playing nicely with other companies. I don't fault them for it, but let's not kid ourselves here; the app store is largely an extremely profitable exercise in rent seeking. It's not like this is new for Apple; they've had propriet…
There’s a thread of truth in what you’re saying, but it unravels on close inspection. Proprietary cables are hardly new, and to be fair those cables and connectors are usually way better than the standard stuff. Firewire and thunderbolt were actually released as open standards and saw decent adoption. Lightning is far superior to Micro-USB. Just listen to the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Macbook owners having to…
Might be because the App Store is the sole channel. Also, apps are easier to substitute than games, making anti-competitive behavior possible.
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I don't know how you arrive at that conclusion unless you seriously compare physical with digital distribution. Retail margins are famously low (very low single digits). The problem is that Apple and Google are exploiting their mobile content distribution oligopoly so aggressively that they are practically begging for a regulatory crackdown. I wonder why companies are getting carried away with this kind of profit des…
> Retail margins are famously low (very low single digits). The margins and costs include more than the wholesale price of the product. The correct question is how much does a farmer get paid for a gallon/liter of milk and how much is that same gallon/liter sold for at the shop. Farmers in the US are getting roughly $1.00 per gallon for whole milk. How much is it selling in the store? Roughly $3.50. Anytime people ta…
So I am fully aware of everything you're saying and I agree with most of it in principle. I do disagree on the numbers you're using. But we are both inevitably ill-informed in the sense that neither of us has the hard numbers required to work out the true cost of running the App Store.
We do know a couple of things though:
1) The App Store is profitable. Apple has said so. Most analysts reckon that it has high and growing margins. Everything Apple says about its services business makes me believe that these analysts are correct.
2) There are only two relevant mobile app stores (perhaps 2 1/2 if you count Amazon).
3) Both charge exactly 30%
This is not a well functioning market by any definition. Dysfunctional markets like these rarely charge too little. So the assumption that they charge too much seems not too far fetched.
To me, charging 30% for every app, irrespective of its price, seems completely implausible, not just the percentage but also the structure. Any plausible pricing structure would include a fixed fee plus a percentage.
I'm not using the word "greed" in a moral sense (as is often the case). I'm using it because it is clearly an act of self harm to extract high margins in an obviously oligopolistic and dysfunctional market.
They are begging to be regulated and why would they do such a stupid thing?
As with so many matters that involve money, arguments fly around left and right that claim to be on principle, but really aren't. When you see ESPN and Comcast argue over showing the World Series, don't buy the argument that one of them is "trying to prevent loyal customers from being able to see their favorite game", or when your local hospital group withdraws from your employer health plan that "the other side is t…
" There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice." Competition laws place limitations on what a business can do. They're not free to sell or price entirely as they please. In this case Spotify are arguing that Apple is using its dominance of the smartphone m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
" There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice." Competition laws place limitations on what a business can do. They're not free to sell or price entirely as they please. In this case Spotify are arguing that Apple is using its dominance of the smartphone m…
Apple isn't doing anything to Spotify that they don't do to all apps - both the app store rejections and the fees. It seems wrong to call that anti-competitive in favor of Apple Music.
Just asking ...
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> they've had proprietary cables and adapters for as long as I can remember. Apart from Lightning, which was created when no better alternative existed, I cannot remember a proprietary Apple connector in at least the past 10 years.
>Apart from Lightning, which was created when no better alternative existed Gotcha, then why does new iPhone not have USB-C while new MacBooks only have USB-C?
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It is quite different in terms of market share (which matters for anti trust issues).
Sony owns approximately 50% of the console market. How much of the smartphone market does Apple control?