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EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

cnbc.com

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Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#401

Post by Leherenn »

finiteseries wrote: post #117
speedgoose wrote: post #11

I wish one of the outcome would be to allow better web browsers than Safari on iOS.

Web ( Chrome ) developers often go on and on about this, but I have yet to hear a single layman user complain about their iOS version of Chrome missing the ability to have the random news websites they’ve followed from Facebook send them native notifications, take up the entire viewport, or be “installed” to their home screen.

I do. We have a device that creates its own Wi-Fi and serves a web app to interact with it. We have a lot of clients that would like to be notified when a new firmware is released for the device.

Another recent one, a customer on iOS 12 did not understand why he couldn't save a file generated on the device to his phone. I told him it's not possible, but he can save it to iCloud (without a correct name though). I got told off about how bad we must be not to support such a basic feature. Don't ask me mate.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#402

Post by lodovic »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #237
seszett wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is forbidden to mention it in their app, though.

Thats a violation of freemarket

Say you buy a can of Coke at Walmart. Would Coca-Cola be allowed to print on that can that it can be bought for less at 7-Eleven?

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#403

Post by hu3 »

dmitriid wrote: post #64
tchalla wrote: post #12

The core issue here is Apple favours their own product over competitors as they control their store. In this case, the product happens to be Music [0]. > The Commission is concerned that users of Apple devices pay significantly higher prices for their music subscription services or they are prevented from buying certain subscriptions directly in their apps. This doesn't seem to be a general issue about the 30/15% cha…

I wish they'd do something about Apple Arcade. The way it's aggressively promoted (slightly less aggressive now than at the beginning) would get any other developer permanently banned from the platform.

I thought you were exaggerating but nope: https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1327979418954977283

Apple shows ads for Arcade, TV and AppleCare inside iPhone settings.

EU regulators are going to have a field day with this with regards to anti-competitive practices.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#404

Post by colinplamondon »

willtim wrote: post #398

App makers complain about Apple's dominance, yet seem to put significantly more effort into iOS apps than Android apps.

iOS customers are far higher income and spend more money - they're way more valuable. You get more revenue per user with way lower support costs. From a demographic standpoint it's a no-brainer.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#405

Post by LegitShady »

treis wrote: post #386
echelon wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is now a monopoly. They shouldn't be allowed to run an App Store, and they should probably have their services division peeled away into a separate company. All of the mega tech monopolies need to be broken up. What business do any of them have being movie studios, advertising firms, car dealerships (Apple?), banks, and fifteen different marketplaces rolled into one? This is absurd. Tech would be better if neit…

>They shouldn't be allowed to run an App Store, and they should probably have their services division peeled away into a separate company. I think the ship has sailed on App stores. They're just better than the alternative and consumers are used to them. I'd consider them an integral part of the OS. The problem is the fees. 30% is excessive especially so for in-app purchases where the customer is already acquired. Th…

% of revenue shouldn't be a thing. They're offering a service for distributing apps - there should be a standard fee and transaction costs. When I go to get tires on my car they don't charge me based on my income. When I purchase a book they don't charge a percentage of my income. On the app store suddenly you owe them a % of your revenue and you have to use them to get apps on iphone.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#406

Post by bryanrasmussen »

simonh wrote: post #76
thayne wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think the key here, and probably a big reason Spotify went after Apple and not Google, is that on iOS you have to use Apple's app store. You can't distribute your app using your own infrastructure, or an alternative app store even if you want to.

Sure I understand that, but personally as an iPhone user I don't care. Users benefit from consolidation in the app store space, it much easier for me to have all my apps come from one app store with one set of rules and policies. I benefit from the fact Facebook can't bypass the App Store rules for security and privacy through side loading and an alternate store. Why do you want to take that away from me? Also as a u…

>Sure I understand that, but personally as an iPhone user I don't care.

I suspect the law is not structured so as to take your personal interest into consideration.

>I think the idea that competition in this area will benefit users is highly dubious.

this seems a very American concept of anti-trust, benefiting consumers is only one part of what concerns European anti-trust, in this case the question is does Apple Music have an unfair advantage on the platform against other music services - the answer would appear to be yes, for actually two points -

1. because they don't have the pay the fee the other music services have to pay

2. because they are not artificially restricted from communicating alternative methods of subscribing to their customers (because they don't need to because they are Apple)

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#407

Post by darkwizard42 »

nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

But is the work of the app store flat fee for an app? I think if you have a massive userbase and drop an update etc. this requires way more of Apple's resources to keep up with, it should probably be a sliding scale right?

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#408

Post by nolok »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #407
nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

But is the work of the app store flat fee for an app? I think if you have a massive userbase and drop an update etc. this requires way more of Apple's resources to keep up with, it should probably be a sliding scale right?

I don't understand your point. If you're serving a file from AWS to ten people or to a massive userbase what happens ? Does AWS pricing change once you have a certain amount of traffic ? No, you pay per GB delivered. Apple should offer that kind of pricing, or a price per user (download) if they want.

And Apple should also be free to offer the % as an alternative if they wish, "don't want to bother with details ? Just stay entirely within Apple's system and pay 30% and that's it". But not strip the possibility of paying by use.

Because again, if I have 500 millions users, delivering a 5 MB update costs the same for a 5$ sub as it does for a 50$ sub, yet Apple's bills 10 times more to the second one.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#409

Post by AnthonyMouse »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #407
nolok wrote: post #391

Lots of comments around the line of "ok maybe 30% is too much, but we can all agree they offer a valuable service, so what percentage should they take ?" Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? Give a price to be listed in store, to be reviewed, to be downloaded by a user, ... And let company pay what they owe you. Let them pay throug…

But is the work of the app store flat fee for an app? I think if you have a massive userbase and drop an update etc. this requires way more of Apple's resources to keep up with, it should probably be a sliding scale right?

You still don't end up at "percent of revenues" but rather some kind of AWS-like bandwidth charge for distribution.

Which the developer should be able to opt out of by self-hosting.

Re: EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint

#410

Post by shuckles »

jonplackett wrote: post #369

The more Apple have tried to strangle Spotify, the more I am determined to wait this out and get Spotify working properly on Siri and Watch. Every time I accidentally say "Siri play ${song_name}" without appending "on Spotify" and Siri nonchalantly replies that it cannot find ${song_name} in my Apple Music library, I double down on my determination not to let them win! Wasn't the default app thing declared a problem…

I have trouble reconciling complaints like this with the argument that Apple should charge for App Store something based on the cost of operating the store. How do you price the engineering hours and strategy risk that go into opening an Apple feature like Siri to 3rd parties? Should it only be users who pay for those costs through their hardware purchase? Certainly not, since it’s impossible to predict those costs over the 5-6 year life of a new iPhone.
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