661–670 of 781 posts
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In a world where walmart is the only store & it bans all other retail stores from existing, Walmart will become monopoly. This is false equivalence
What do you call the Play Store? What do you call Android? Talk about false equivalence, you’ve just demonstrated that.
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It's the fact when you get large enough and force things that are considered unrealistic or anti competitive platform it becomes an issue. This isn't new to American business. It evolves. It use to be oil, steel, ATT, Microsoft.. Now it's Apple. Tech is long over due for a overhaul only a matter of time until some politician uses it to add a feather to their cap. 30% cut of a sale of a mature economy is just crazy.
>30% cut of a sale of a mature economy is just crazy. That is why it isn't 30% after the first year. It is 15% for subscription based software starting year 2. As I pointed out earlier, Apple also eats credit card transaction costs (~2.5%) and the costs of collecting and paying sales tax in 50 states and 155 countries, app store personnel, servers, etc...
I think it’s absurd that you can neither buy a kindle book from the iOS kindle app nor the Amazon app. How user unfriendly! And yet, Apple runs their own digitsl bookstore... since there’s no way to remove 30% revenue from apple’s own venture, they’re using a monopoly position to monopolize another market. Oh, but Apple isn’t a monopoly because there’s Android. Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? You could alw…
You can still buy Kindle books on iOS using Mobile Safari so there is that.
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This is a great picking apart of Apples justification but I think the issue that most irks everyone who’s not apologizing for Apple is where did this magic number 30% come from? Which market forces created it? Here on HN most of us probably feel that product manager at Apple licked their finger, felt the wind and said “Yeah 30% seems about the most we can get away with” And what irks even more is once Apple set the p…
The App Store wasn't the first online store on mobile phones, there were stores for downloading ringtones and wallpapers on some devices and some primitive app stores particularly in Japan. The typical markup on these was 50% at the time, while typical retail markup is 40% for many types of goods. Consensus among pundits was that Apple would charge 50% and 30% was widely reported at the time as being surprisingly low…
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If I were an app developer who relied on in-app purchases, I would probably care a lot more. But as a consumer, I don’t, and I suggest the only reason consumers have to care is because app developers (understandably) want lower fees and are negotiating terms via PR.
You should care because in the end you are the one paying the 30%.
Are developers going to lower prices of in-app purchases if Apple’s cut goes down? Doubtful. But if they do I might buy more.
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Not all monopolies are created equally. Some have greater cost to society. For example, Qualcomm has an essential patent which grants them a monopoly over certain communications technologies but it has been mitigated by requiring them to license it in a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) way. A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had…
> A monopoly by Standard Oil was pervasive in all of daily living because by the early twentieth century, they had control of more than 90% of the country's petroleum fuel production and logistics which they abused to keep any competition from ever gaining a foothold. The key point here is that 90% market share constituted monopoly power, whereas Apple's 46% share of the smartphone market likely does not.
"But Apple needs to fund the App Store. XCode, payment processing, reviewers, it all costs money". Yes, very little in comparison. Apple made $50 billion in revenue from the App Store in 2019. $50 BILLION. The data centers costs to serve up this are miniscule in comparison. Apple could build 50 datacenters PER YEAR EVERY YEAR for that revenue. Reviewers? A staff of 10,000 fulltime reviewers paid $200k per year would…
Yes, I don't get why they don't just hand out phones and everything for free, duh. I mean surely they could do that for a while with all that revenue instead of theoretically buying 50 new data centers per year every year? Why I am not getting free stuff from rich people? What economic wizardry am I missing?
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Epic is not putting up some legal crusade for the “little guy” competitors. Epic is putting up a fight for Epic. It all comes down to money. If Epic was running their own platform, and 3rd parties didn’t want to abide by their rules, then Epic would give those 3rd parties the finger and tell them to F-off the same as Apple. Each is trying to grab as much profit as they can while running into the issue of other hands…
You're right, but you're not. Yes, Epic is trying to make money. But if Epic is allowed to open their own store it would be very good for small developers. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.
I think it’s absurd that you can neither buy a kindle book from the iOS kindle app nor the Amazon app. How user unfriendly! And yet, Apple runs their own digitsl bookstore... since there’s no way to remove 30% revenue from apple’s own venture, they’re using a monopoly position to monopolize another market. Oh, but Apple isn’t a monopoly because there’s Android. Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? You could alw…
> Why did we think Microsoft was a monopoly? They had 94% market share in 1990's. They actually invested in Apple to keep them from going under.
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If they manage to land their store on iOS, expect them to do the same anti-competitive things they did in the PC market... paying studios to exclusively put their games on the Epic Store only. Even games fund raised by communities, and games already announced to be launching on other platforms. I don't see that as much of a win.
Developers being paid to make games sounds great. Why is Epic a bad guy for paying developers?