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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

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Apple is forcing its customers to bundle their phone with their billing platform. Which should be illegal (as we democratically decided to have these laws), having no choice in services is not a feature it's an additional price to pay for the product and customers legally didn't agree to that simply by buying a commodity phone (no contract, no consideration whatsoever for this additional price). > People should ju…

I’m curious - In the EU are businesses required by law to accept whatever form of payment the customer would like to use? Are vendors required?

No, you can't pay with any currency like Zimbabwean dollars and expect the EU to force businesses to accept it, no.

But this article isn't about legal tender or how debts can be repaid it's about anti-trust and coupling commodities (like bread, and phones) with exclusive services without a service contract at the moment of purchase.

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

#482
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.

EU alredy regulated interchange fees for cards to 0.2% for debit cards and 0.3% for credit cards:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/lt/IP_15_...

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn’t it be nice if banks charged a fixed fee for a loan no matter the size? Visa/MasterCard/etc are not comparable here because they are financing transactions which do have percentage based mechanisms such as % of fraud or % charged back.

The cost to the issuer is proportional to the size of the purchase in the case of credit default or fraud. So a fixed fee does not make sense for loans. This isn't the case for the App Store.

BTW, Visa/MasterCard don't manage risk afaik -- the card issuing banks do that. Visa just connects the pos terminal etc to the right bank.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn’t it be nice if banks charged a fixed fee for a loan no matter the size? Visa/MasterCard/etc are not comparable here because they are financing transactions which do have percentage based mechanisms such as % of fraud or % charged back.

Banks and loan are not a good comparison since you ll most likely understand a million euros loan will be harder to produce for the bank than a 1000 one. Taking a percent is fine.

Tbh it would be fine if Apple charged per bandwidth usage. But taking 50 or 500 euros in wont change how much it cost them to deliver the app.

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

#485

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 o…

I’m paying for those costs with my £1300 iPhone. Now I want to set whatever app as default that I like.

Also it isn’t like apple aren’t offering those features - I can play music on Spotify with Siri already. They are just putting deliberate annoying barriers in the way to make their own product appear better.

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

#486
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not a 1:1 comparison because you are not forced to use them, you're free to go to another one, or not take them and use checks or cash or bitcoin or whatever you want. If Apple was not making it mandatory to go through them, it would be another story from my point of view. Note that payment processor fees are massively regulated in the EU as well, with very low limits. So by that precedent the EU coming an…

You‘re not forced to use them? So you have to pay your Spotify subscription by cash or checks. How many people will still subscribe to Spotify? I haven‘t ever seen a check in my live besides in TV. In some sense you are „forced“ to use them. And in some sense it is ok, as long as one party does not has to much power.

FYI: Apple disallow you to redirect your users to subscribe outside of their app without their fee. You cannot tell your users "go to our website to subscribe by check for 30% less", that gets you banned. So yes, you are forced to use them.

> 3.1.1 In-App Purchase: If you want to unlock features or functionality within your app, (by way of example: subscriptions, in-game currencies, game levels, access to premium content, or unlocking a full version), you must use in-app purchase. Apps may not use their own mechanisms to unlock content or functionality, such as license keys, augmented reality markers, QR codes, etc. Apps and their metadata may not include buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms other than in-app purchase.

Also, I don't know how common it is in the US but in the EU and here in France we have "prélèvement" (~bank direct debit ?)

Eg I (virtually, on my computer) sign an agreement for company X to take amount Y from my bank account every Z amount of time for a given service. It takes less than a minute to setup and sign directly on the provider website (no need to contact or connect to my bank). I can cancel it at any time through the provider or at my bank. Since a couple of years they are valid in the entire EU accross countries "prélèvement SEPA" (Single Euro Payments Area). They're entirely free, for the customer AND the one billing them (there are bank fees depending on your bank, but no interchange fee, eg I use them to charge many of my customer and it costs me a flat fee of 25e/month for the web access).

That's how I pay my amazon prime, my amazon purchases, my electricity bill, my mobile phone bill, ... So a certain swedish music company could bill me in france that way for virtually no fee.

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

#487
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If iOS becomes the android wild west it'll kill the entire selling point of the iPhone. What always baffles me, truly leaves me flabbergasted and confused, is.....who is going to force you to use any other app store other than the Apple Store?? I'm on Android, and yes, there are other stores that exist - you can download the Amazon Fire store or many others, or even sideload apps......or......shocking......you can…

>> What always baffles me, truly leaves me flabbergasted and confused, is.....who is going to force you to use any other app store other than the Apple Store?? Think of the new privacy controls: Facebook doesn't like them. So they open their own iOS store, circumventing all Apple rules concerning privacy labels and do not track status.

While I see the problem, I'm prepared to argue that it should have never been Apple's job to fix the inherent problems with Facebook. If an app is so bad for your privacy that you can only install it through a special dedicated app store.....then maybe that's enough to put people off? And even if it isn't.....well, I can't help it if people want to have shitty facebook tracking them. I'd definitely prefer that they have choice to install it themselves rather than they didn't, and regulatory bodies can regulate what data facebook can collect, not Apple.

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

#488
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.

But what if you're selling content that you aren't making more than 30% profit on? There's flaws for both flat and percent. Something more nuanced might be required.

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

#489
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should add, the ruling is not really about the validity of the 30% fee. What EU seems to argue is this: 1. Apple is in phone business, Spotify music. So far so good... 2. Then apple wants to get into the music business too. Now they have an unfair advantage since Spotify must pay 30% to apple while apple music "pays" 0%. So apple use their dominance in one area (phones) to get an advantage in a totally different area…

Apple have been in the music business much longer than Spotify.

Exactly, it's time they let others use the phone they built in Shenzhen to listen to music with apps not made by Apple.

There's 0 reason to over tax Spotify as punishment for trying to do it better. The capitalist thing to do would be to allow and enjoy fair competition in a pure and perfect market.

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