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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#251

Post by bobthebuild123 »

pja wrote: post #246
indigochill wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's along the same lines of what Microsoft did when they were being investigated as a monopoly: throw a bone to smaller developers (or in Microsoft's case, kids in school) which actually just grows their market share (in Microsoft's case, kids learn to use Microsoft products and take that to work, in Apple's case, more devs see profitability in the Mac garden). > Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive ele…

Appoogle are a duopoly. You can’t get significant sales on mobile phones without going through their respective App Stores, which both charge 30%. What a coincidence! Your comparisons with book publishers are specious: if I write a book today I can go to any of a number of publishers, none of whom have any kind of control over access to readers. Or I can even self-publish and sell direct. Jailbreaking is a complete i…

Google literally has multiple alternative app stores currently active.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#252

Post by benhurmarcel »

singemonkey wrote: post #82
varispeed wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15% is almost like state level tax. They shouldn't ask more than 5% or they should take payment per app review and take no sales commission. The app store is what makes their iPhones useful, so in my view they should be paying developers to make apps not the other way around.

Tone can be hard to judge, so you should append the /s tag to make it clear you're joking, otherwise people are going to assume you mean it.

It's not that crazy to think that Apple owes to the app developers, at least some of them.

In the end, a lot of Apple customers would never have bought an iPhone if it couldn't run their essential apps (like Whatsapp, Spotify, Youtube, etc).

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#253

Post by coder543 »

estreeper wrote: post #136
gtsteve wrote: post #21

Looks nice but it doesn't solve my fundamental problem: 1. I invest loads of time and effort developing an app 2. Apple rejects it -or- 2. Apple approves it 3. I ship a new update 4. Apple rejects the update and now decides my app should have been rejected retroactively. I'm especially concerned about what happened to Hey and others but my customers are demanding smartphone apps and there are still limits to what can…

> there are still limits to what can be done with a mobile web browser This is true, but perhaps not as many as some may think! Progressive Web Applications can now do quite a lot on mobile and tablets, with a notable exception of push notifications on iOS. They are an increasingly interesting option for those whose use case allows it. https://simplabs.com/blog/2020/06/10/the-state-of-pwa-suppor...

That "notable exception" is fatal to PWAs for most businesses who might otherwise develop one. Apple needs to implement that.

As an iPhone owner, the inability for PWAs to have notifications is probably my single biggest gripe at the moment.

I wrote more about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24643185

and here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24731713

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#254

Post by bredren »

Apple is not in any danger of losing their lawsuit with Epic. However, it did not make sense why Epic was paying the same amount of fees as an indie developer.

I said it before, but Epic went about this all wrong. They should have started this out as a grass roots campaign focused on their indie devs that licensed Unreal.

Epic should have advocated for Apple to reduce low revenue App Store royalty payments to these people. Then used that win as a springboard toward trying to get their own reduced as well.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#255

Post by simonh »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #234
indigochill wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's along the same lines of what Microsoft did when they were being investigated as a monopoly: throw a bone to smaller developers (or in Microsoft's case, kids in school) which actually just grows their market share (in Microsoft's case, kids learn to use Microsoft products and take that to work, in Apple's case, more devs see profitability in the Mac garden). > Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive ele…

Should that work in that way on desktop also? With Microsoft/Apple being free to restrict apps to their store only, and taking a cut of every transaction made outside the browser? If not, what's the difference with phones/tablets?

The difference is just a historical choice. The desktop platform owners chose to be open in that way, but they didn't have to. Games console makers chose to go the locked down route at about the same time (in the grand scheme of things). The Mac launched long after many locked down games consoles existed. They just chose different strategies.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#256

Post by whywhywhywhy »

saagarjha wrote: post #85
lilyball wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple provides value to both end-users and developers. It does not seem unreasonable to charge them both. And if Apple did not charge developers, that would suggest they’d have to raise prices on end-users to make up the difference, which does not seem fair to the users.

But developers provide value to Apple and users as well, and of course already "pay" by writing software for the platform.

To Apple developers are disposable, if you don’t want to make software in their garden someone else will clone your app there. They seem themselves as the ones providing value to you.

It won’t be long till they make more changes to make sure they get that value out of you on the desktop too.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#257

Post by [deleted] »

breakfastduck wrote: post #139
varispeed wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a level that state would take to take care for roads, healthcare, civil service, army and so on. There is no justification for such high % to maintain an app. They could charge per app review and maybe the data transfer fee no more than Amazon S3. Anything else is Apple abusing their monopoly. Developer can't submit their app to an alternative app store because Apple doesn't allow that and it must change.

It's not 'maintain' - its offer all the services that come along with it (integrations, store, download, hosting, authentication). If you produce a food product, you should expect the store to take a cut of the price before it gets to you.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#258

Post by bsaul »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #63

Classic antitrust maneuver; divide and conquer, this time from Apple. Antitrust activists shouldn't let this dull their pencil. The main issue is not the exorbitant commission rate. Apple is hurting the consumers via its anti-competitive behavior with regards to what apps people are and are not allowed to install on a device that they've paid for. They are blocking value creation up and down the stack in a manner tha…

Absolutely agreeing as well. It’s a nice gesture from apple towards independant developers, but it doesn’t solve the fundamental issues stated over and over. I hope they won’t get away with it, especially now that laptop and desktop are closer than ever to live the same fate.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#259

Post by forest_dweller »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #211
forest_dweller wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I have a link on my site that takes a customer directly to the store page, and they buy it, then Apple did nothing at all to earn an "affiliate" level payout. They didn't drive any traffic. The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase. This would be no different than if a boxed piece of software was in a brick and mortar retaile…

> The store provides you visibility through promotion on the store page, being listed in search and taking payment for the purchase. Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out. > They are still buying through apple. Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut. > 30% is reasonable because that is the standard rate in mo…

> Only the first two are affiliate behavior, and they don't apply to every purchase, and you can't opt out.

What is and isn't affiliate behaviour isn't important. They are acting like an affiliate I said. It is close enough.

> Right. But that's just facilitating a transaction, which is usually not a 30% cut.

Yes it is a 30% cut. We have already established it is on other stores.

> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.

You can choose not to do business with Apple.

> People get pressured into unreasonable rates all the time...

These aren't unreasonable rates though. If they were unreasonable people would not publish there. End of. I don't understand how people can say something is unreasonable when there are lots of people using it and making money just fine. So for a lot of people they obviously think it is reasonable.

> Again, standard and reasonable are different things. And again, the problem is you can't choose the type of relationship.

You can. You can not deal with the app store.

> It's always going to be viable for someone to publish. Even with a 90% fee. But surely we can agree that 90% would not be reasonable, even if it was standard?

No we cannot agree. Firstly 90% is not viable to anyone, nobody would agree to that and people wouldn't publish on the app store. So to start your premise is completely absurd.

Pretend for a moment Apple did raise it tomorrow to 90% cut to them. The vast majority of would just pull their apps and Apple would have to lower the rate again. Every company chooses 30% because it is what everyone else does because it is more or less fair to both parties. Now if another player releases a new phone with a store and they have a better market rate and a decent market share then Apple will lower their rates (like Nintendo did).

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#260

Post by rndgermandude »

m463 wrote: post #183
pja wrote: post #173

I’m seeing a lot of positive comments on HN about this: to me it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part. They hope to significantly reduce the pressure on politicians to take a close look at their App store practices by significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue. This has nothing to do with “doing the rig…

Apple/Google's 30% take is a tiny baby elephant in the room. Apple and Google have a model where they make lots MORE money outside the system and if the price of software is ZERO they would be happy. In Apple's case, even free software sells their phone. In Google's case, even free software funnels users to their ad platform. [1] "Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements." 1: https://www.joelons…

Apple has revenues of about $275bln, and a net margin of about 21% company-wide, meaning $58bln.

The app store sold about $50bln worth of stuff in 2019, Apple's 30% cut would therefore mean $15bln in revenue. If they operated the app store at a least a 70% margin (and really, if they didn't, then I'd be rather surprised), that would mean a good $10bln in net profit from the app store, or 17% of their total net profit.

And that's still not accounting for the network effect the app store creates, or the business intelligence.

It might not be the biggest elephant ever, but it's not what I'd call a tiny baby elephant either.

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