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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

#511

Post by paulpan »

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…

Agreed, though the same could be argued for credit card payment processors like Visa and Mastercard taking a 2-2.5% cut of every transaction.

Shouldn't they also just be regulated to only accept a fixed amount instead? I'm genuinely curious why this example isn't brought up more often and is just assumed to be the norm.

The irony in this % discussion is that Apple tried to use the same rationale against Qualcomm in their radio modem feud - Qualcomm wanted to charge a % on device price for using their radio modems whereas Apple pushed for a fixed amount. I'm sure AWS would love to bill % of revenue but perhaps due to competition, they can't do that.

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

#512

Post by shuckles »

charwalker wrote: post #508
shuckles wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a physical good or an upgrade to a physical good isn’t an “in-app” purchase. I don’t think Apple is taking a cut here — it’s probably just Apple Pay.

Apple Pay IS Apple. In app purchases are also subject to their % cut.

I think you don’t understand what you’re talking about. If I buy a kiddie pool from the Shopify app with Apple Pay, it is not subject to the App Store in-app purchase terms. Similarly, if I book a massage through Yelp and it supported Apple Pay, there would be no App Store fee. Apple’s cut is for digital goods whose consumption is facilitated through your app.

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

#513

Post by minhazm »

yummies wrote: post #434
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 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.

Apple does not take a cut of this. It's charged to your existing payment method on file. It's closer to a physical good, since it's an enhancement for an actual physical good.

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

#514

Post by egocentric »

AlexandrB wrote: post #435
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…

I recently had a change of heart on this issue when the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store was documented[1]. It's hard to argue that Apple is providing significant benefit to either consumers or developers for their 30% cut when they seem incapable of reigning in obvious fraud. In addition, I think Apple pushing subscriptions as a solution for long term app funding (instead of upgrade pricing or other op…

Thank you for being open-minded.

Since the article you posted, I’ve uncovered a lot more about the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store: https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...

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

#515

Post by Twixes »

zajio1am wrote: post #482
tomasreimers wrote: post #445

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.

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_...

Yep, its great because I never feel bad about paying for tiny things by card. I remember how before this regulation the card companies were extracting so much profit (with a minimum fee) that it was often expensive for a convenience store to accept cards. Some had lower bounds of what you could pay by card, to keep the fees at a manageable level. Now it's not a problem, contactless payments are everywhere and for everything due to slim fees. The only downside is that credit card rewards are modest compared to the US

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

#516

Post by bogomipz »

mlok wrote: post #417
ethbr0 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you missed the joke about first-isms.

If there was a joke I did miss it, that's for sure. And I still do :)

Apple Corp was a company started by the Beatles back in the 1960s. The later Beatles albums were released on Apple Records as well. This Apple was also a source of much legal litigation between the Fab Four and the Apple company being discussed in this post. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps

They have both been successful business ventures and interestingly the original idea for the Beatles' Apple Corp is actually very close to what Cupertino's Apple is today electronics, music and movies and retail:

"On the founding of Apple John Lennon commented: "Our accountant came up and said 'We got this amount of money. Do you want to give it to the government or do something with it?' So we decided to play businessmen for a bit because we've got to run our own affairs now. So we've got this thing called 'Apple' which is going to be records, films, and electronics – which all tie up"

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

#517

Post by joshstrange »

AlexandrB wrote: post #435
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…

I recently had a change of heart on this issue when the prevalence of fraudulent apps on the App Store was documented[1]. It's hard to argue that Apple is providing significant benefit to either consumers or developers for their 30% cut when they seem incapable of reigning in obvious fraud. In addition, I think Apple pushing subscriptions as a solution for long term app funding (instead of upgrade pricing or other op…

> has resulted in apps as simple as text editors or todo apps needlessly becoming subscription services

I'm torn on this. Of course I prefer to pay once for software but that's not really realistic in today's world where iOS (or Android) development is rarely "Write once, post online, walk away". It's an ongoing process and there aren't very many apps out there that are "done" (even the big players). I understand that my Drafts subscription goes to pay the developer on an ongoing basis to support the product and add new features.

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

#518

Post by jonplackett »

shuckles wrote: post #499
jonplackett wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s no way you are paying for 5 years of software development and your hardware for $1300. Suppose half the cost of iPhone was to build the physical object (likely low, given Apple’s 35% overall gross margins), you’re effectively saying that iOS is worth $10/mo, which is a gross underestimate. It is at least as complex a piece of software as Creative Cloud which costs $30/mo. As another benchmark, premium Android…

OK even if I accept your argument, I still don’t believe that gives apple the right to stifle their competition by forcing them to jump through arbitrary hoops. Like I’ve said - they are already giving Spotify access to Siri. They just make it deliberately painful. And as a software developer I really don’t think it would be remotely difficult to route calls for music to an alternative music app. They are already doing the hard work of deciding if a request is for music or something else.

By your logic Microsoft are also fine to force everyone to use internet explorer forever because they put so many hours into making windows.

That’s an argument that was lost 20 years ago.

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

#519

Post by tokyoseb »

paulpan wrote: post #511
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…

Agreed, though the same could be argued for credit card payment processors like Visa and Mastercard taking a 2-2.5% cut of every transaction. Shouldn't they also just be regulated to only accept a fixed amount instead? I'm genuinely curious why this example isn't brought up more often and is just assumed to be the norm. The irony in this % discussion is that Apple tried to use the same rationale against Qualcomm in t…

Credit card fees are already regulated the EU, i.e. card interchange fees are capped at 0.3%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#European_Union

As to why it's not a fixed payment: I'm not sure if some of their costs/liabilities would scale with the size of the transactions?

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

#520

Post by dmitriid »

hu3 wrote: post #403
dmitriid wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh god. Somehow I forgot about Apple TV+ :) I probably got fewer ads for it than for Arcade :)
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