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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#301

Post by pja »

valuearb wrote: post #298
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…

“In today’s news Apple announced the opening of its iOS platform to allow users to install any apps they want from any alternative App Store. Posters on ycombinator.com denounced the move as a cynical attempt to generate positive PR. Said one, just because Apple has listened to us and stopped doing the evil things we asked it to stop, does not mean we won’t find new things to criticize it as evil for.”

That would actually be a substantive change that would genuinely change the App market dynamics. This ... is not that.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#302

Post by kmeisthax »

grishka wrote: post #281
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…

It's not even the 30% cut itself. It's the inevitable necessity to go through Apple if you want any presence on iOS. The only solution I see here is to allow proper sideloading. Apple keeps trying to spin the app store as a way for users to discover apps, when in reality, the reason developers publish their apps there is that it's the only way onto the millions of iOS devices worldwide.

Personally, I think the iOS App Store would still maintain it's market positioning even without iOS's technical lockout. Most people stay on the first app store they see and hate having to switch to new ones. First mover advantage is everything; look at the relative uptake rates of Steam vs. Origin or Epic Games Store.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#303

Post by bredren »

pja wrote: post #262
archildress wrote: post #247

I just feel that there's always this discussion about "X% isn't fair because $reason" (insert Apple's market cap, free cash flow, stock price, etc.) But what I'm yet to see is any kind of mindful analysis of what a "fair" fee is without the emotion attached to the discussion.

Sure, I refer you to a comment I made in a previous thread about mobile payment revenue shares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23583011 As a point of reference, HumbleBundle charges 5% for the Humble payment widget. They handle hosting your data, all the payment systems for taking payments from most of the world, handling chargebacks on your behalf etc etc. If you want to sell your game on the Humble Store on t…

>The fact that Apple’s systems make it almost impossible to effectively communicate with your own customer

Do you see effective communication with customers being interrupted by the App Store page itself? For example, the UX on the app description where the only link is to Developer Website at the bottom under Information? Or a mix of things?

Can you propose or point at a set of proposed changes that would improve the opportunity for direct communication between app developers and their customers?

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#304

Post by valuearb »

sneak wrote: post #291
tabs_masterrace wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding me? This is great news for indies and small companies, to which I count myself, and I will be making 15% more money. Dude, I'm really happy reading this announcement today, thanks Apple, what else is there to say? I think some of you might have trust issues, and are stuck in a spiral of negativity, it's getting a bit weird. Now Google please follow!

Unless I am misunderstanding, I believe you will be making 21.4% more money? (70% share of revenue -> 85% share of revenue)

Even better!

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#306

Post by realusername »

bobthebuild123 wrote: post #251
pja wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Like which ones? Even the Amazon Appstore, the largest alternative store is so negligible we might as well pretend it does not exist.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#307

Post by _jal »

bobthebuild123 wrote: post #251
pja wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How many of them have > 1% market share?

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#308

Post by wokwokwok »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #290
wokwokwok wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... while continuing to get a third of the revenue from all the most lucrative developers. So what? Seriously, who cares if Epic earns 14 bzillionty dollars this month, or 20 bzillionty dollars? At that scale, the 30% is such a terrible thorn in your side? Come on. Cry me a damn river. The 'narrative' here is Epic pretending they care about anyone except themselve…

> Seriously, who cares if Epic earns 14 bzillionty dollars this month, or 20 bzillionty dollars? The narrative here is amazing, because you're not sympathizing with Epic because they're so big and have so much money... but they're still the little guy compared to Apple. The scale of Apple's monopoly profit makes Epic look like a corner pharmacy in Montana.

"Little guy"?

Epic is fore casting earning something like 5 billion dollars this financial year.

You'll have to try a bit harder to get a bit of sympathy for them than 'they're smaller than apple'.

...

5 billion dollars.

...

And you want me to care that another company is shaking you down for a couple of million?

Boo hoo. Poor epic. I wonder how they pay the bills.

Oh, I know! They use some that 5 billion dollars they made to do it.

--

I think maybe there are some, you know, real people, who will get some tangible benefits from these rate cuts.

If Epic loses out.. or... you know, if they get them too? Really, it makes no difference to them at all. So.. I really. Do. Not. Care.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#309

Post by throwaway3699 »

wokwokwok wrote: post #283
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Apple didn't fear either Epic's lawsuit or Congressional action, or both, they'd never reduce their app store cut, for anyone, ever. This announcement means Apple knows that neither public opinion nor the law is on their side and they're about to lose really, really big. And they're hoping if they can flip this around a bit and get control of the narrative, they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... w…

> they can convince regulators they will self-regulate... while continuing to get a third of the revenue from all the most lucrative developers. So what? Seriously, who cares if Epic earns 14 bzillionty dollars this month, or 20 bzillionty dollars? At that scale, the 30% is such a terrible thorn in your side? Come on. Cry me a damn river. The 'narrative' here is Epic pretending they care about anyone except themselve…

If epic can spend 50 million to receive and extra "5 bzilionty" dollars plus excellent PR, that's bloody good business.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#310

Post by phn »

grishka wrote: post #281
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…

It's not even the 30% cut itself. It's the inevitable necessity to go through Apple if you want any presence on iOS. The only solution I see here is to allow proper sideloading. Apple keeps trying to spin the app store as a way for users to discover apps, when in reality, the reason developers publish their apps there is that it's the only way onto the millions of iOS devices worldwide.

Making it hard for the regular joe to pirate apps is a big part of apple's allure me as a developer.

Your app/game won't be 24h on the play store without the apk popping up on some random site, ready to be downloaded.

I don't see a way to do proper sideloading without opening this avenue. Maybe a mac os style notarization scheme, but apple gets a lot of flack for that too.

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