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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

#571

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#572

Post by colinmhayes »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #558
fastball wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my stance has always been that companies should exist to: 1. deliver value. 2. capture a fraction of that value. I think it is pretty clear in most cases that 30% is well above the value Apple is actually delivering with their App Store. It's not like Apple is building the apps for other people. You still have to build the app entirely on your own, the only thing Apple is doing is letting you distribute your ap…

> I think it is pretty clear in most cases that 30% is well above the value Apple is actually delivering with their App Store. You’re entitled to your opinion. And maybe it is not valuable to you. But I doubt you even know the costs to run the service so my opinion is that you are speaking from a place of ignorance. Part of the value of the service is that you don’t have to go and build it yourself. I’m going to bet…

The app store makes tens of billions of dollars a year. You can't argue it delivers anywhere close to that amount of value.

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

#573

Post by colinmhayes »

varispeed wrote: post #424
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #46

Since this is an EU case, that should mean it'll actually do something, and won't take a decade and a half to conclude. The penalty won't be the big deal here, it'll be what Apple is prohibited from doing. And it'll be really exciting if the precedent set blows back on the entire 30%-rent-seeking-platform-industry.

> Since this is an EU case, that should mean it'll actually do something Are you joking, right? Below is the quote from the linked article: > The EU ruled in 2016 that Apple had to repay 13 billion euros ($15.7 billion) in unpaid taxes to the Irish government, after the latter granted “undue tax benefits.” Apple and the Irish government have contested the decision and the case is still in court. I believe there is go…

That happened because the Irish government refused apple's payment.

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

#574

Post by colinmhayes »

minhazm wrote: post #524
josephcsible wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's trying to force you to manage your iPhone. All we want changed is to have the choice to manage ours if we want to.

I don't understand this logic. You go into buying an iPhone knowing all of the restrictions they place on it. Why would you buy it and then complain about the restrictions? Just don't buy it in the first place. You can buy one of the dozens of other cell phones on the market with an OS that's more open.

I need an iPhone because of iMessage. All my friends use normal messaging, and without iMessage texting is impossibly slow. I've tried to get them to switch to WhatsApp but they refuse. It's a big enough deal that I'm willing to look past all of iOS's bullshit. But I'm not happy about it.

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

#575

Post by heisenbit »

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…

Functional pricing i.e. pricing according to what it is worth to the buyer is an indicator for a monopoly. This was one of the arguments that were used to go after IBM way back so there long standing precedence.

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

#576

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

cafed00d wrote: post #351
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't invent music players, nor appstores, nor smartphones, nor digital music or music streaming. The entire argument is a red herring. But even if we take this absurd argument at face value, it's still wrong: third party applications add value to iPhone and make them worth bying. If you could not install games, bank app, etc. On an iphone, iPhones would be useless and noone would buy them in the face of compe…

Third party apps have been dominant on PCs and Macs on the open web for a decade prior to the iPhone. Third party apps such as FB.Connor even Spotify.com still run on the iPhone built on HTML5. Of course, I will concede that the desktop publishing industry and the banking, finance, spreadsheet industries benefited from native computer apps in the decades prior to that. Counter to the narrative of Windows phone’s fail…

> "why were BlackBerry and Nokia successful despite not having third party apps at the scale iPhone does?"

They were in the process of dying around the same time as Windows Phone was and all for the same reason: the iOS/Android duopoly.

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

#577

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> Overall, Apple has not been a good steward of the App Store.

I'd go one step further and suggest that neither Apple nor Google are good stewards of the mobile app distribution market, either.

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

#578

Post by asddubs »

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…

interesting point i hadn't really considered, i guess the app store interface doesn't really lend itself to selling upgraded versions of your software, since you'd essentially be starting over in terms of ranking/ratings/etc every time you do that

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

#579

Post by nicky0 »

nolok wrote: post #408
darkwizard42 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ? Jus…

Your flat fee model would really suck for free apps.

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

#580

Post by donmcronald »

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

On the PC I have a mail app that turned into a subscription service and there are downsides. I have a lifetime license and get all the updates because I bought it before it went subscription based.

Now it feels like there’s a relentless push for more features every month to justify the subscription. Every month there’s some stupid update that does something I don’t need or want.

And the subscription costs 3x what I pay for my mailbox at Zoho. Sorry, but your stupid email client isn’t worth more than what my email provider charges me.

I won’t say the name because I think they’re a smaller company and they made good on all the lifetime licenses they sold afaik.

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