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Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

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Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#11

Post by mcphage »

woodgrainz wrote: post #2

Apple's market share is low enough that it may continue to be unchallenged by enforcing all its own apps to be the default apps. Antitrust will probably not apply to them, I suspect.

I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I remember from conversations here recently about anti-trust, is that it all depends on how the "market" is defined. Apple has a non-monopoly share of the smartphone market, or even the app market, but they do have a monopoly share of the iPhone market. Sometimes, that's the relevant metric.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#12

Post by zepto »

mcphage wrote: post #10
adgasf wrote: post #3

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

Also allow apps to allow purchases inside without going through Apple's in-app purchases. Maybe they need to decide on a case-by-case basis, or maybe only for apps for companies with a large external presence, but not being able to buy eBooks through the Kindle app, because Apple wants it to go through their own in-app purchases instead of Amazon's own payment gateway, is frustrating.

If they allow enough In app purchases not to go through the store then they have no way to collect money from anyone, Since all apps could then just collect their money that way.

If you limit it only to an anointed group of large companies then you have formed a cartel, which itself is likely illegal.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#13

Post by zepto »

mcphage wrote: post #11
woodgrainz wrote: post #2

Apple's market share is low enough that it may continue to be unchallenged by enforcing all its own apps to be the default apps. Antitrust will probably not apply to them, I suspect.

I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I remember from conversations here recently about anti-trust, is that it all depends on how the "market" is defined. Apple has a non-monopoly share of the smartphone market, or even the app market, but they do have a monopoly share of the iPhone market. Sometimes, that's the relevant metric.

By that logic, any manufacturer who doesn’t produce a commodity is automatically a monopolist.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#14

Post by wayoutthere »

pwinnski wrote: post #4

> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store. It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage. Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incent…

I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the reason for it. There’s a reason it was so culturally difficult for them to license “clone” Mac hardware in the 1990s; it’s just not in their DNA.

They understand that the end user relationship is all that matters. For Apple’s brand to succeed, they have to own the relationship entirely so they can protect their users from bad actors. That is literally why a large segment of people choose Apple products. Do iPhones have malware problems on the scale of Android? No, because of Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store. I honestly think Apple would shut down the App Store entirely in favor of something more universal like WASM before ceding control of the user experience. General platform security / privacy also benefit from this approach.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#15

Post by elliekelly »

adgasf wrote: post #3

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

Exactly. I would even go a step further, considering Microsoft’s antitrust issues from tying Netscape to the Windows OS: most of the iPhone’s preloaded default applications shouldn’t be there at all. Ideally users would be prompted at setup whether they’d like to install the Apple version.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#16

Post by just_myles »

" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter."

That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#17

Post by kyle-rb »

pwinnski wrote: post #4

> The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store. It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage. Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incent…

>Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive.

I think that Apple's policies are definitely what makes people spend more money through the app store, but that in itself is only really a financial incentive for Apple. Changing their policies would mean more apps distributed outside the app store, which would probably mean more money for developers (but less for Apple).

For an example of this, see Fortnite being distributed outside of the Google Play store. Google didn't get a cut of all the Fortnite in-app purchases, but Apple did.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#18

Post by danShumway »

alienreborn wrote: post #7

Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple: https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-everybody-59030...

From the article:

> Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product. Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that item. If Target finds that the product has stickers telling you to purchase this item from Amazon or another location for a lesser amount, Target will remove the item from the shelves, and rightfully so. It is their brand that is bringing in the customers, not the products.

It seems at first glance like this would largely contradict Apple's earlier arguments that purchases are between app developers and consumers, and that it's just an intermediary in the process[0]. Anyone willing to comment about a subtlety to this argument I could be missing?

[0]: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/13/apple-app-store-lawsu...

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#19

Post by pwinnski »

just_myles wrote: post #16

" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter." That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.

Netflix doesn't give up 30% or 15%. It's listed as an example of a "Reader" app, so Netflix subscriptions take place entirely outside of Apple's infrastructure[0] and therefore Apple get zero of that money.

> How do you make any money...

The remaining 70%/85% is a pretty good start. As they say before that point, "developers have earned more than $120 billion worldwide"

[0] The point Apple glosses over here is that Netflix isn't even allowed to provide a link back to their site for subscribing within the app, which seems difficult to defend.

Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

#20

Post by balabaster »

mcphage wrote: post #10
adgasf wrote: post #3

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

Also allow apps to allow purchases inside without going through Apple's in-app purchases. Maybe they need to decide on a case-by-case basis, or maybe only for apps for companies with a large external presence, but not being able to buy eBooks through the Kindle app, because Apple wants it to go through their own in-app purchases instead of Amazon's own payment gateway, is frustrating.

Also...

- Kindle

- Kobo

- Audible

- Audiobooks.com

They're all equally frustrating as one another on iPhone. It pisses me off that I can't just do a one click purchase and listen on my iPhone or a "Read next book in series" button. I have to log into the website and purchase and go through a whole fucking song and dance just to get a book to listen to on my journey. The user experience for this use case quite frankly sucks balls.

I love my iPhone, I tried to become an Android lover a while back but went back to my iPhone because I want a device that just works without making me jump through a million hoops and my iPhone does - except for this use case which is about a thousand times worse than Android.

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