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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

#531

Post by vlozko »

ziml77 wrote: post #474
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…

For some reason a flat fee hadn't even crossed my mind, but that makes a lot of sense. The cost of an application doesn't change the distribution costs at all.

There’s fixed components to the cost as well as variable ones. Storage/CDN distribution is relatively fixed. I would say so is access to developer tools and APIs. What’s variable are services that an app may take advantage of, such as push notifications, geolocation queries, iCloud access, and App Store approvals. More established companies tend to release new versions on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

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

#532

Post by bryanrasmussen »

amelius wrote: post #529
minhazm wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps we should be selling dummy physical goods with our software then. E.g. software $1, coffee mug $100.

The mug has your personal QR code on it! It's unique!

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

#533

Post by mfost »

halostatue wrote: post #496
georgyo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger difference is that the play store does not mandate using Google as the payment processor for transactions and subscriptions. Spotify would have no reason to look for an alternative app distribution mechanism on Android.

Fortnite was kicked out of the Google Play store for the very same violation of rules and consumer trust that they pulled with Apple. Epic are also suing Google under the same concocted story.

No they sue Google for a different reason althougher. On how they blocked OEMs from making a deal with Epic to include their store/launcher on phones (thus allowing it the same capabilities for autoupdates and the like than the Play Store)

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

#534

Post by Karunamon »

ericmay wrote: post #323
simion314 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FUD = fear , uncertainty and doubt. >But long story short, I like things as they are and don't want them to change. If developers don't like that they can kick rocks. I'd rather have no apps and no App Store than to see things change, frankly. Who would force you to change? you could buy the US iPhone version with the diamond handcuffs. >Well, judging by all the requests I get to fix things on computers versus iPhone…

> Who would force you to change? you could buy the US iPhone version with the diamond handcuffs. I'm not sure how up to speed you are with the current state of the discussion around this topic, but the gist of it is that if you make changes to the App Store, then Apple's work with respect to privacy, security, etc. go out the window because major apps that want to abuse these things will move to third party app store…

Apple loses the ability to collectively bargain on behalf of users.

Without being overly smug here: Good.

Apple have been terrible stewards of the platform. Arguably better than Google, but that's a bar so low a deep-bore drilling machine couldn't clear it. The app store is overrun with scams, the approval process is nonobjective and unreliable, and prohibits entire classes of useful software on shaky moralizing grounds.

I don't want Apple to bargain on my behalf. I want apple to fuck off, get out of my way, and stop telling me what I can run on my hardware.

If you don't like iPhone and Apple so much why not just not use the products?

If Apple doesn't like the EU's rules why not just stop doing business there?

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

#535

Post by nolok »

AnonHP wrote: post #527
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…

> Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? ... > It's ridiculous that it doesn't matter if my app has a 5$ sub or a 50$ sub, I owe them 30% anyway. What they provided is the same in both cases, they should be able to price it out to me. Their current pricing structure is not setup like a fee for services and infrastructure usage, it's…

I did, the EU did, and as a result their fees got massively regulated in the EU, below 0.5% ; on top of other reasons why this comparison is not fair and equal as discussed in many comments below (no market monopoly associated, and percentage actually matching the costs and expanses of those card issuers to their own providers [banks] as opposed to apple's fee being disconnected from the reality of the underlying costs).

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

#536

Post by sixstringtheory »

tolmasky wrote: post #459
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…

They should take whatever percentage they want, even 100%, as long as they allow alternative ways to get apps onto the iPhone and to charge for in-app purchases. The problem isn’t that their price is too high, it’s that it’s the only game in town. Allow alternatives and then the price they choose can compete with the rest of them. We can see exactly how valuable of a service it really is.

People will always take the cheaper option, so might as well make that the only option instead of causing what will surely be claimed in the future as a decision trap for consumers. Hey, maybe 30% already was the cheaper option and they did just that?

Allowing sideloading apps or alternative app stores will send the platform straight to hell, by opening up new exploit vectors in an already insanely complex system, and/or creating new and perverse incentive models for app developers and app store providers.

We’re going to turn smartphones and the app ecosystem into what has become of journalism in the digital age of information because we want nice things for cheap/free.

Cheap/fast/good. Apple has always aimed for the last two. You’re going to have to sacrifice one to get the “cheap” part.

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

#537

Post by nolok »

tokyoseb wrote: post #519
paulpan wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Vast oversimplification: it's because of chargebacks and fraud. It works kind of like an insurance, someone needs to take the loss at some point and fixed amount doesn't work for that (or would massively hike the fees for cheap sales).

That's why when EU capped the fee "so low" we also massively pushed for 3D secure deployment, so those lower fees would still easily cover it.

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

#538

Post by lutoma »

AnonHP wrote: post #527
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…

> Uhhhh, not a percentage ? Do you imagine AWS billing you a % of your revenue instead of a given price for a given service ? ... > It's ridiculous that it doesn't matter if my app has a 5$ sub or a 50$ sub, I owe them 30% anyway. What they provided is the same in both cases, they should be able to price it out to me. Their current pricing structure is not setup like a fee for services and infrastructure usage, it's…

There's no monopoly on credit cards though. There's multiple providers, some countries have their own (cheaper) debit card networks, and you can still pay with cash.

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

#539

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pembrook wrote: post #509
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's macromanagement. It's a big clear fault line that regulators can see from outer space, instead of trying to evaluate whether Apple App Store charging Spotify a given percentage is anti-competitive based on a detailed analysis of their cost structure and having to argue about the allocation of fixed costs between business units. It also has the advantage of creating a de facto limit on entity size so we don't end…

> It's a big clear fault line that regulators can see from outer space Nothing in the world of regulation is a clear fault line. You're just creating different points for regulators and lawyers to fight about. How are you defining " market power in any market? " Is it just if a company gets 20% of a market? 50%? 70%? 90%? This also gets extremely sticky in markets that are still developing. Take Saas for example. Mai…

> How are you defining "market power in any market?"

This is already a concept that exists under established antitrust law. It's complicated and ugly and could probably use some reform, but it's also a different part of the equation. "Does this company have market power" is a separate question from what do we do if they do, for which the proposal is to prohibit vertical integration.

> Is it just if a company gets 20% of a market? 50%? 70%? 90%?

Market power has very little to do with what percentage of the market the company holds. For example, in a market with two local ISPs where one has 95% of the market and the other has 5%, they could both have market power because the market is so consolidated that the company with 5% could still be able to dictate terms to customers. On the other hand, a company with 99% market share might not have market power, if barriers to entry are low and any attempt to raise prices would cause new competitors to enter the market, as is the case with e.g. Walmart.

> Mailchimp arguably has "market power" in email marketing (70%). Should they have been allowed to get into the social post scheduling business? Using your argument, you could call that unfair competition for social media management Saas tools like Buffer, since Mailchimp already holds market power over one area of the marketing stack.

I don't see the trouble here. Mailchimp may or may not have market power (I don't know enough about that specific market to evaluate it), but knowing 70% isn't really that informative. If they do have market power then preventing them from leveraging it to destroy Buffer is good. If they don't then they wouldn't be prevented from entering the other market.

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

#540

Post by FredPret »

fouric wrote: post #450
FredPret wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> "[banning sideloading] is a strict downgrade" Nope, I can buy my mom an iPhone and know that it's not possible to totally brick it by clicking a link from a dodgy text/email

> "Popularity does not make you right" I'm not saying that the closed approach is fundamentally better than the open approach, but it sure is for some use-cases. That's why we have a phone OS duopoly.

Regarding Apple's garden walls not keeping all the creepy-crawlies out, sure, but it's vastly better than on Android.

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