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

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

#441

Post by yyyk »

slver wrote: post #188
falcor84 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is with 'internally'. As I understand it, the antitrust regulations could force Apple to spin Apple Music out.

Let's take a step and ponder wouldn't you find it bizarre to have this sequence of events: 1. Apple creates iPod, and iTunes serves as its music store. 2. Apple creates iPhone, which has an iPod app. 3. Apple introduces App Store so other apps can be used on the iPhone. 4. iPod (Apple Music) competitors emerge. 5. EU says "that's it, Apple can't have iPod anymore on the phone unless iPod (Apple Music) becomes a separ…

>In effect the EU penalizes the creation of market places, because once you're market place, you lose control over your own products to the government.

Operating a marketplace generates billions for Apple, and without the Apple Store I doubt the iPhone would have any value today. This comes with legal duties. Apple can't do whatever with their marketplace, but must compete fairly within it.

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

#442

Post by nolok »

LatteLazy wrote: post #437
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…

The issue here is that Spotify can easily pay 10k for being listed despite making billions. Meanwhile anyone making freeware, open source or small apps and just trying to get started is fucked.

Not an issue, already solved in many market: offering the normal pricing doesn't stop the provider (here Apple) to offer other special terms to those who want them.

Example in another market: you can buy an Unreal Engine license, or you can get it for pretty much free but then owe a % of sales.

Nobody is saying Apple cannot offer an alternative "30% all included flat price", the complaint is about them offering ONLY that.

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

#443

Post by sirsinsalot »

nolok wrote: post #432
sirsinsalot wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstractly AWS sort of _do_ charge you a % of your revenue. For the resources you consume from AWS for $C, those resources should be generating a revenue for you of $R, if $R This assumes that as your needs increase, your profit increases and so does your AWS bill. Granular, PAYG billing is really just a tax on what you _should_ be converting to profit in some sense. At least, it's an interesting way to look at capit…

By your metric anything you pay is a % of your revenue, I think you understand what I meant in the context I meant it. Imagine a scenario where you realize you can double your prices without changing anything else nor losing customer, therefore only changing your revenue by doubling it . Your AWS bill doesn't change. Your Apple store bill doubles. This is factually a tax on revenue.

I did understand you, and wasn't disagreeing. Just offering up a comparison as someone currently doing AWS price projections based on unit costs / CLV and seeing a fairly even margin on AWS resource usage vs revenue-per-resource. Cost plus and all that.

It struck me at the time, that the granular billing allows AWS to function less like a product seller and more like a tax.

A weak comparison granted.

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

#444

Post by simondotau »

gcthomas wrote: post #294
jVinc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just think about it: one company is in practice entitled to 30% of what any other business makes (in any industry)!! This seems to be the case for all markets. I don't really see myself winning a case against wallmart if I complain they want a markup on sales of my product and that they are misusing their "monopoly" on "wallmart shelf space" by not allowing me decide to put my products in their store without their…

Walmart is competing openly with the store down the street. If I have a iPhone I can't use another store — it is a lock-in.

If you walk into Walmart, you’re not going to find a Target. And you’re certainly not going to find a Target paying 0% commission to Walmart.

There you go, another equally ridiculous Walmart analogy.

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

#445

Post by tomasreimers »

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…

Your argument applies equally well to payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, Stripe, etc.) and, as a society, we seem to be okay with them just taking ~2% of Revenue despite their underlying costs (largely) being a flat fee.

I'm not saying it's okay, simply that there's precedent fairly ingrained in our economy.

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

#446

Post by fraud »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #430
martimarkov wrote: post #422

I can empathise with both sides. 30% is too high and Apple have costs and want to make money. But my question is: if apple are to be running the App Store at cost are devs okay to pay for their apps? Let’s say you have a free app but now you have to pay a fee for App Store maintenance and that would be on every download and every app update. Are developers actually ok with that? Is that a fee that the users will bear…

How does it work now for free apps?

Not an expert but i believe all they pay is the $100 apple developer fee every year to be able to publish apps... 30% seems to only be for apple payments like subscriptions and app purchases

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

#447

Post by LatteLazy »

nolok wrote: post #442
LatteLazy wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is that Spotify can easily pay 10k for being listed despite making billions. Meanwhile anyone making freeware, open source or small apps and just trying to get started is fucked.

Not an issue, already solved in many market: offering the normal pricing doesn't stop the provider (here Apple) to offer other special terms to those who want them. Example in another market: you can buy an Unreal Engine license, or you can get it for pretty much free but then owe a % of sales. Nobody is saying Apple cannot offer an alternative "30% all included flat price", the complaint is about them offering ONLY…

The issue is that if Apple lose a tonne of money when Spotify decides to go flat fee, someone has to make up that difference. So smaller Devs lose out as they're currently being subsidised...

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

#448

Post by nolok »

AlexandrB wrote: post #438
yummies wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most ridiculous example of this is Tesla's offering of in-app Autopilot upgrades. At $10k, imagine what Apple's cut is, for absolutely no value added.

It's interesting that this seems more shocking even though it's not much different than Apple collecting 30% on one thousand $10 purchases.

It's because Apple's actual costs are pretty much fixed (storage, bandwidth, ...) so clearly on a low price / many customer scenario it seems fairer.

That's why a per usage pricing would be fairer. And yes, the app having one thousand $10 purchases would pay way more than the app having a single $10000 purchase, but that's the point.

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

#449

Post by hk1337 »

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…

Technically, AWS doesn't bill on percentage but they do bill on how long something is being used and how much data is run through whatever you're using, plus a number of other charges.

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

#450

Post by fouric »

FredPret wrote: post #217
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.

That fact is key to the advantage that the iPhone ecosystem offers. I, and millions of users like me, like the closed garden. I’m effectively outsourcing the duties implied by caveat emptor to Apple. I don’t have the time/inclination to check the safety & honesty of each app developer.

> That fact is key to the advantage that the iPhone ecosystem offers.

That's not an advantage - that's a disadvantage. Having an open ecosystem is a strict superset of the functionality of a closed ecosystem. If I can sideload, then I can sideload and use Apple's app store. If I can't sideload, then I can only use Apple's app store. It's a strict downgrade.

> I, and millions of users like me, like the closed garden.

Meanwhile, I, and millions of users like me (more, if you count every Android user as not liking walled gardens), do not like the closed garden.

Popularity does not make you right.

Absolute popularity doesn't even matter - only relative popularity does.

> I’m effectively outsourcing the duties implied by caveat emptor to Apple. I don’t have the time/inclination to check the safety & honesty of each app developer.

Apple doesn't do those duties consistently - malware repeatedly appears on the app store, and Apple doesn't even attempt to make sure that the vast majority of apps adhere to their privacy labels.

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