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Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

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Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#211

Post by filoleg »

cwhiz wrote: post #197
zachruss92 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, my stance here is that Google is pretty reasonable with their guidelines compared to Apple. My biggest issue in the iOS vs Android debate is that apple is behaving monopolistically and Google isn't. Using the respective app stores give publishers an inherent audience to distribute/sell content through. I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple/Google to try to profit off of the audience they've built. W…

Apple is a minority player in every single market in the world, including the US. You can't have monopolistic behavior without a monopoly. You can't be a monopoly if you are not the market leader. People want this to be a legal issue but it's just a market issue. If people don't like these policies they shouldn't buy Apple products or release apps on Apple devices.

>Apple is a minority player in every single market in the world, including the US.

While I heavily agree with the rest of your reply whole-heartedly, this specific part isn't entirely correct.

You are correct that Apple (when it comes to smartphones) is a minority player worldwide, but it isn't the case in the US, where it sits at a comfortable 58% smartphone market share [0], thus making it a majority player.

0. https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#212

Post by cblades »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #168
zachruss92 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, my stance here is that Google is pretty reasonable with their guidelines compared to Apple. My biggest issue in the iOS vs Android debate is that apple is behaving monopolistically and Google isn't. Using the respective app stores give publishers an inherent audience to distribute/sell content through. I don't think it's unreasonable for Apple/Google to try to profit off of the audience they've built. W…

Google's stance here looks good on paper, but the reality is very different. Fortnite was the most ambitious attempt to distribute outside of Google Play. Here's what Epic had to say: > After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization: Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvantage, through technical and business measures…

That all seems very reasonable. Apps downloaded from other sources are much more dangerous than apps downloaded from Google Play.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#213

Post by benhurmarcel »

natch wrote: post #120
hortense wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Music is 30% more expensive when purchased via iOS. If that seems insane, it's because it is.

Sounds like a common math mistake. Wouldn't it have to be 42.857143% more expensive to make up for giving Apple a 30% cut of the total? Or is Google just throwing up its hands here? Or is their math that bad? Or maybe my math is bad, I don't know.

The Apple fee is 30% on the first payment (so 42% more expensive), but afterwards it's 15% for a continuous subscription (18% more).

Averaging it to 30% and rounding doesn't seem too crazy.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#214

Post by benhurmarcel »

selykg wrote: post #72

I'm really having a hard time wrapping my head around why this is such a huge deal to people. Opinions are fine, everyone can have one but I always see Apple's payment options as a massive win as a consumer. 1. Subscriptions are easily monitored from a single page. 2. Before subscriptions renew I get emailed, not all services do this, shame on those that do not and a magic renewal transaction goes through without not…

> as a user I would NEVER use something other than Apple's payment solution in the App Store

Would you choose to pay Hey's subscription $142/year to be able to pay on the App Store, instead of $100/year paying on the web? Or if it was available, would you pay Adobe's Creative Cloud for $906/year in the App Store or $636 on the web?

I'd choose to pay slightly more for the convenience for very small subscriptions too. But for large ones that's too much difference.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#215

Post by PascLeRasc »

mikestew wrote: post #169
wildfire wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those engineers enabled this outcome. It is perfectly reasonable to ask why they facilitated immoral actions. There is a code of ethics all computing professionals should use to consider their actions. https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#:~:text=The%20Code%20incl... .

It is perfectly reasonable to ask why they facilitated immoral actions. Are you seriously proposing to give the presenter for the Core Audio session grief over this? IMO, that's just being a jackass "because purity". Or something; I'm at a loss to truly categorize such behavior.

Off topic, but do you know if there's actually going to be a CoreAudio session? I've been doing a ton of reading on it over the past year and I'd love to tune in.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#216

Post by Despegar »

iav wrote: post #141
Despegar wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). The reason why everyone has to narrowly define the market to "Apple has monopo…

Defining Apple as a monopolist on iOS is like calling Ford a monopolist in selling radios in Ford vehicles. No one thinks it’s a violation for Ford to include their own radio (built by a 3rd party like Bose - same as an app) in a Ford truck, and offer you an expensive upgrade to that radio (say also by Olufsen - also like a better App) if you want it. No one demands that Ford allow a different vendor to sell you a co…

Your analogy was good until the part about warranty, which isn't relevant to Apple.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#217

Post by spullara »

gamblor956 wrote: post #30

Note to the people asking why this matters: Legally, if you take a position in federal court on X (i.e., that it's okay to ban external transactions by apps using your app store), and you are found to be doing not-X in an analogous situation (i.e., setting up external transactions to avoid fees in your competitors' app store), the court can rule against you in the original case...and then sanction you and your lawyer…

In this case they are following the rules on the other platform. Just like they expect their own rules to be followed on their platform.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#218

Post by spullara »

mkozlows wrote: post #111
GeekyBear wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Obviously if Apple owns one platform, and Google owns the other platform, it is not actually the same situation. Let's look at a situation where Google is seeking to protect it's own cut of the action. >“After 18 months of operating Fortnite on Android outside of the Google Play Store, we’ve come to a basic realization,” reads Epic’s statement. “Google puts software downloadable outside of Google Play at a disadvant…

Apple literally puts technical measures in place to ensure that it's 100% impossible to download outside software.

Anyone could get a developer account and compile the code and deploy it to their phone if the app owner released the source code.

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#219

Post by [deleted] »

ehutch79 wrote: post #185
SkyBelow wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't sound right, so let me try to form an example to get at what is the issue I'm seeing. Let X be "It is okay for me to ban my customers from using discounts." Let not X be "It is okay for me to use discounts offered by another restaurant." This doesn't feel like a particularly contradictory situation. Maybe the issue is that we skipped a few too many steps, because there isn't anything particularly illegal…

I THINK the situation is more... Let not X be "It is okay for me to use discounts at another restaurant that bans discounts."

[deleted]

Re: Apple Music on Android requires its own payment details to avoid Google 30% cut

#220

Post by iav »

vonmoltke wrote: post #155
iav wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defining Apple as a monopolist on iOS is like calling Ford a monopolist in selling radios in Ford vehicles. No one thinks it’s a violation for Ford to include their own radio (built by a 3rd party like Bose - same as an app) in a Ford truck, and offer you an expensive upgrade to that radio (say also by Olufsen - also like a better App) if you want it. No one demands that Ford allow a different vendor to sell you a co…

> if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK This has been generally illegal in the US since 1975: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2302 (section c)

Interesting and I was wrong. While that might make for a good case why Apple should be compelled to allow the side loading of apps (especially since an App can be sandboxed and couldn’t possibly damage the device, a key criteria in the link). It still makes it hard to win an antitrust case against Apple. If you defined the market for Ford radios as to only include Ford-manufactured vehicles, then every single car company is a monopolist. Defense would push back that Ford competes against GM and Tesla, not against Bose and Sonos (in my prior analogy), so as long as consumers have choice of cars, then Ford shouldn’t be subject to antitrust actions and remedies in regards to radios.
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