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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

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Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#361

Post by Spivak »

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?

I think they should be allowed to do it. If we let them get away with it because the alternatives are worse then that's our own fault.

Hard to fault a business for realizing that they have a stupid amount of leverage because people have made themselves dependent on you and charging more.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#362

Post by ethbr0 »

zaroth wrote: post #342
ge0rg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm publishing the same (paid) app on Google Play and on Amazon's store, which is AFAICT the most widely used alternative (outside of markets where Google is not active). My Amazon income is less than 2% of the Google income.

Which just goes to show how Google’s and Apple’s investment of tens of billions of dollars building out their respective ecosystem presents a tremendous opportunity to developers. Amazon made a half-hearted effort to compete in the space and the result is “less than 2%” in your case.

> tens of billions of dollars building out their respective ecosystem presents a tremendous opportunity to developers

That's... one way to look at it.

Another way is that they'd be spending even more if there were more healthy competition in the alternative app store market.

Amazon is incentived to run an Android app store now, in the same way Microsoft was incentivized to maintain an ARM build of Windows: it's not a corporate priority, because it doesn't make business sense for it to be until the playing field changes.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#363

Post by beagle3 »

kqvamxurcagg wrote: post #158
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…

I have to agree you. It's intolerable that Apple has been allowed to lockdown their device for 10 years, completely control the market for apps and when it looks like regulators will take action they reduce their price and claim to be acting in the interest of small business. Third party app stores must be allowed. Apple should not be allowed to dictate what software I can and cannot have on my device.

Regulators and authorities really like locked down devices. Not the FTC, but everyone else (FCC, NSA, SEC, FBI). It’s not going to change, unfortunately.

Practically speaking, the only big thing a web app can’t do on an iPhone that most app writers would like to do is notifications. Most other locked down things like call recording aren’t available to App Store approved apps either (and APIs are being removed from Android)

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#364

Post by forest_dweller »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #219
forest_dweller wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 30% is a case for antitrust given how big Apple App Store today is. 15% seems reasonable, 10% would be ideal. Not it isn't a case for anti-trust. 70/30 split whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship. https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut... The judge in the case agreed. > Judge says the 30% rate is the industry rate— references Ste…

> whether people on here like it or not is a standard agreement for these types of business relationship. Not seeking a cut of almost every transaction going through your OS just because you built the foundations and gatekeep the door was standard too.

You can make transactions through the web browser. So that isn't technically true.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#366

Post by latortuga »

viktorcode wrote: post #172
IshKebab wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just consensus. 30% seems very large, 15% is tolerable. I don't think anyone liked 30% before either but anyone that can get away with charging 30% is probably already in a monopoly position so nobody has ever been able to do anything about it. Apple are only change now because of the threat of a lawsuit.

In fact, in 2008 many people liked 30%. Especially those who used to pay ~50% for getting into a mobile carrier store.

As someone who graduated from college in 2008 let me tell you that 30% sounded basically like highway robbery to me and soured me on Apple for a lot of years. I refused to buy anything Apple related because I viewed (and still do) that 30% as abusive.

Maybe folks in industry saw it differently but I definitely beg to differ.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#367

Post by nhumrich »

jmull wrote: post #360
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…

> purely a cynical piece of PR Well, this is a big change to a core part of their App Store business model. It’s hard to reduce that to a PR move. Consider the revenue at stake here.

The revenue at stake for apple is likely almost nothing. As soon as a company (not app) makes over 1 million in purchases via apple, then they start paying the full amount. So, apple is losing 50% of the revenue from companies that dont make at least that much. Which is small potatoes to apple.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#368

Post by Dylan16807 »

forest_dweller wrote: post #355
Dylan16807 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is close enough. It's really not. The difference is the part that actually motivates you to pay an affiliate. > We have already established it is on other stores. When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%. > You can choose not to do business with Apple. That doesn't disagree with what I said, which is that you can't choose the type of relationship with Apple.…

> When you look at other services that are just doing payment/download, it's far cheaper than 30%. Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC. EPIC can afford such a low rate because they are flush with cash from Fortnite and Unreal Engine dominates the professional game engine market. EPIC are trying to buy their way into the market, if it works then steam…

> Except if you look at the link that compares all similar stores. It is around about 30% except for EPIC.

Your list is companies being paid an affiliate rate. If I start linking companies that don't do affiliate stuff, they charge a lot less.

Which is to say that 30% could be a reasonable amount if you had any choice in the matter of what services you want to purchase from apple.

> It was never 90% rate. Apple has had the 30% rate since 2011.

All that matters is revenue vs. cost.

Apple's app store brings in about 80 billion a year right now.

In 2013 it was 10 billion.

People made apps in 2013, even though 70% of 10 billion is less than 10% of 80 billion.

They'd make apps for 10% of 80 billion and they'd definitely make apps for 25% of 80 billion.

> If everyone did it all at the same time as a protest. Apple would have to respond and everyone certainly would.

Everyone standing up and refusing those billions of dollars in solidarity is more outlandish than anything I've said.

> So you are saying paying the 30% on the App store is worth it as you get a larger paying market. Which is what makes the 30% reasonable because it is worth it.

It's much easier for a fee to be "worth it" than to be "reasonable".

If an airline started charging a fee of $5 for "Breathable air or whatever, screw you.", it would still be worth buying a ticket, but the fee would not be reasonable.

Re: Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

#370

Post by psahgal »

wokwokwok wrote: post #308
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

You are correct that Epic Games made 5 billion dollars in revenue in 2019, according to Venturebeat [1]. However, Apple Insider reports that Apple made 59.7 billion dollars in revenue in their third fiscal quarter (March, April, and May) of 2020 [2].

Epic's definitely not a little guy, but compared to Apple, it looks more like a respectable medium-sized company.

I find Apple's revenue numbers and market value truly staggering. Few companies seem to be able to compare.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/epic-games-shareholders-s...

[2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/26/what-to-expect-fr...

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