EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint • Hacker News Board

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

#661

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #629

huhtenberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Allow alternative payment options. The rest will follow. If supporting alt-monetized apps in AppStore will be too much for Apple, then they should allow AppStore alternatives or start charging hosting/processing fees. If paying through AppStore will be more expensive than paying in some other way, then Apple should lower the fees. Just needs some form of competitive pressure to get the ball rolling.

Would you be okay with allowing alternative payments methods if Apple still billed you 30% of your revenue rather than collecting it at the point of sale? Because if no then it is about the fee and not the payment processing.

Not sure I follow. What would justify this 30% cut in this case? The fact that they are forcing all app installs to be done through the AppStore? A fair fraction of vendors don't need that the exact same way they don't need payments to be funneled through Apple. It's Apple's choice. No reason why the vendors should be forced to pay for it.

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

#662

Post by heavyset_go » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

Sebb767 wrote: post #604

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't remotely equivalent or comparable. First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head. I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple. Second, the fees actually benefit the customer. They're there to protect the customer from fraud, and to provide perks. I have no idea how…

> First, you're free to choose other forms of payment. Visa isn't holding a gun to your head. And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head. > I know many sellers simply adjust their prices if you're paying credit -- see almost every gas station in the US. You can't do that with Apple. You can't do that with PayPal, either. > I have no idea how I benefit from Apple's fees. Ser…

> And you're free to choose another phone vendor. Apple isn't holding a gun to your head.

You're "free" to choose one side of the same coin, because Apple and Google have a duopoly in the mobile app distribution market. They both abuse that market dominance to prevent competition in the mobile app distribution market from offering consumers better, more efficient and cheaper options.

Google prevents mobile app distribution competitors from competing with the Play Store on feature parity because user installable 3rd party mobile app stores cannot implement automatic upgrades, background installation of apps, or batch installs of apps like the Play Store can.

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

#663

Post by xxs » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #551

nolok wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> (or would massively hike the fees for cheap sales) I've come to the viewpoint that this would be a good thing. I think we've moved too far in the direction of never paying for anything with cash.

Most of North Europe is quite cashless, and it's perceived an improvement.

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

#664

Post by xxs » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

dropofwill wrote: post #451

nolok wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AWS price per GB actually goes down as you reach different monthly checkpoints. To me it seems like payment processors are a more direct comparison and they usually do a combination of flat fee + percentage.

Payment processors bear the risk of fraud and extra checks for large sums. App stores have effectively zero risk.

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

#665

Post by inetknght » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:32 PM UTC

xionon wrote: post #609

inetknght wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your comment is completely divorced from the situation on the ground when it comes to app development Perhaps it is. > The UI has changed overtime, sometime substantially, How so? I see an app in the store. I install it. An icon shows up on my screen. I tap it to open it. A window is shown where I can type text in. If I receive a phone call or text message, something is displayed on the screen to alert me to that f…

> Notably, text editors from 30 years ago still work fantastically. Email clients from 30 years ago still mostly work great (unless using certain popular anti-consumer cloud email providers). What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for and (b) have not been regularly updated for 30 years and (c) still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems? To be direct, I…

> What text editors and mail clients are you using regularly that (a) you paid for

None. The text editors and mail clients I use are free. They have been regularly updated for 30 years. And they still work on modern systems with modern file types and file systems.

Where appropriate, I do purchase and donate. Mozilla, Wikipedia, and some direct payments to certain developers, for example.

Thunderbird is good software. Vim, grep, and xterm are among the best text utilities in the world. Or, if you want, emacs.

> To be direct, I highly suspect that any 30 year old applications you're referencing receive regular updates, are tragically underfunded, and the developers would ultimately benefit from upgrade or subscription pricing.

I appreciate your directness.

Apps that don't to follow the latest anti-consumer trend don't need to be updated with new features every few months. They don't need bug fixes twice a day. Their development costs are massively less. And their development is often done because the developer needed the tool anyway. I'd call them altruistic. But I think a lot of apps would do better with more pro-consumer behaviors.

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

#666

Post by xxs » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #457

nolok wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But for Spotify or other apps that sell content Apple is not providing storage, bandwidth, or anything else. They do provide payment processing, but it's common for that to be a small percentage of purchase price already (e.g. ~1-2% for credit cards).

>e.g. ~1-2% for credit cards

It's capped in the EU - 0.3% for credit card, 0.2% for debit ones. That fee includes all the risks of chargebacks and fraud processing.

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

#667

Post by dhdhhdd » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #463

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.

I'd argue that their cost scales to the price paid because credit card processors are taking on the liability for those transactions. Additionally, a 2% fee is nearly inconsequential. If Mastercard and Visa demanded 30%, there would be literal riots.

And yet interchange rates in Europe are capped at around 0.2%. 2% is still a lot of money.

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

#668

Post by dmitriid » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #625

dmitriid wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but Apple could listen for actual developers want and implement those features Did you even visit the link? Developers may want the moon. And yet both Mozilla and Apple consider those (and not only those) harmful for a bunch of reasons, the primary of which is privacy.

Apple could be smart and implement what real developers need and not what advertisers want. But good performance, and better APIs would mean you could avoid using native apps.

Once again: real developers may want a lot of things. I've seen developers want bluetooth and location APIs in the browser. And yet, both Apple and Mozilla (note: not just Apple) consider these APIs harmful as currently presented and specified and haven't found/can't find a way to implement them in a non-harmful way.

And these APIs are the most visible. There are many other APIs and features that don't make their way into WebKit not because Apple "doesn't listen to real developers", but because the specs are extremely poorly written, or contain known bugs, or can't be implemented efficiently, or...

The scary thing is, these days Firefox devs are increasingly often on WebKit's side (because whatever your opinion of Apple is, WebKit devs want the same thing that Firefox devs want: a safer web web for people with properly implemented features). Whereas Chrome just plows through (because Google's raison d'etre is the Web, and Google wants to subsume and replace the web with all things Google).

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

#669

Post by gamblor956 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

SllX wrote: post #547

GlobalFrog wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant, whereas having prefered treatment because of your monopoly at any stage is. Some are mentioning the App Store being the root of the monopoly, and that is probably true. But speaking from a legal EU point of view, especially as the EU is stating their case in the streaming music area only, wouldn't the simplest way for Apple to get away with it be to externalize…

> As said elsewhere, who was there first is not relevant You want to go back and re-read the comment I directly replied to where bullet point 1 was the EU (hypothetically at this point) making determinations about who was in what market and laid the foundations for bullet point 2 based on its own flawed presupposition and then tell me that the timeline is irrelevant? I didn’t point this out to make an argument agains…

Antitrust law focuses on the restraints of trade. Companies that are minor players in the market have been successfully pursued for antitrust violations, because it does not require a monopoly, or even market dominance. Monopoly law was the origin of antitrust law, but today is merely a subset of it. (For example, bid rigging, market allocation, and price fixing are all antitrust violations.)

Antitrust generally requires a substantial market position, and the use of that market position in one of a number of enumerated anti-competitive manners (the list differs between the U.S. and E.U.). One antitrust violation both the U.S. and E.U. have is the abuse of market position in one market (i.e., mobile devices) to anti-competitively establish market position in a different market (i.e., streaming music).

Apple has approximately 1/3 of the EU market for smartphones, which is a substantial enough market position for a single market position that antitrust concerns come into play. (Legally, the comparison is not Apple vs Android; it's Apple vs Samsung, LG, Huawei, etc.) Note that Samsung, etc., would have similar antitrust concerns if they tried to launch their own streaming music services in the same fashion as Apple did.

Note that if Apple had required an industry-standard fee for processing iOS subscription payments (generally, 2% or less depending on territory), or didn't require Spotify to use iPay, then there wouldn't have been any antitrust issues.

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

#670

Post by username90 » Fri, Apr 30, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

simondotau wrote: post #454

Someone wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It’s not that Apple wants 30%, it’s that they get away with it. For most companies, such a demand would be fine, legally (suicidal, but fine. Companies are free to make stupid decisions)

30% has been an industry standard for digital sales for a long time, long before Apple adopted it.

Which is what EU intends to fix.