51–60 of 111 posts
I am not sure that the motivation by these States are well-intentioned.
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The prices aren't invisible to the companies putting the app on the Google store. In principle they could try and use a different store with lower fees and reduce their prices for the same margins couldn't they?
They mean for the average app purchaser: $0.70 - App $0.30 - Apple Fee $1.00 - Total And I agree. The reason it’s obfuscated is because people would instantly realize it’s bad value.
Imagine you release your app, and you expect to hit a few thousands users... except those users are world-wide. Now imagine attempting to figure out how to process credit cards from 100 different countries, register your business enough to be able to file tax records for those 100 countries, actually file taxes for those 100 countries every year, etc. Sure $3,000 of your $10,000 went to Apple, Google Play or whatever, but it would have gone towards a huge number of other costs if you'd tried to go at it alone.
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First million is at 15% for everyone I figure?
This article [0] says the Play Store takes 15% from the first million but Apple's store takes 30% of everything once you pass one million/year. But it also makes it clear that only a very small percentage of apps in either store make more than one million/year. Another article [1] says 98% of developers in the Apple store would be below one million/year but also that that long tail generates only 5% of the store's re…
So it's much better to earn 999k instead of 1.1 million...
The obvious answer when players dominate a market like this is government 1) force competition or 2) add regulation.
The easy solution here is to rule that 1) app stores can control how payments are made/received by apps. And then they are forced to put a offering that works vs other payment provider. 2) Possibly, though would have challenges, force Apple/Google app stores to become interoperable over some longer term period.
For the wider market I think a big part is platforms with significant market share need to be either distributors or product owners. For example Amazon should not have amazon products and they are a distributer, this stops them watching some business become profitable on their platform than just replace with their own products or changing search result to favour their own product etc. The same with a company like Netflix, otherwise we are going to see a very small group of streaming companies and it will be near impossible for anyone else to step into that space.
Something else Id also consider though is a bit mixed with pros/cons is make a rule suppliers have to offer standard prices. So I can offer Walmart my pens at $0.05 because they buy 50 million of them and charge $0.40 to the small business that buys 10,000. This would also be great for healthcare such as hospitals having the insurance price vs cash price vs negotiated price etc.
I think people often forget a core role of capitalism of government is to maintain a level playing field. This helps ongoing innovation and to put pressure on entrenched market segments for a more efficient system.
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This is an interesting point but it would apply to almost every line of business. Retail charges 60% markup. Imagine the outrage. 30% is a gross margin and doesn't take into consideration a lot of thigns. It'd be nice if Americans were exposed to the margins of everything but I'm not sure how much would change. The 'end price' for consumers is fair enough - the issue is one of competitiveness and that Android phones…
I tend to agree that most people wouldn't care about Google's cut. The only way to bring the fee down is to create more 'stores' where developers can sell their apps. Then the margin will completely collapse from 30% to near 0.
And to some extent, controversially, I ask why not? If Epic can take a percentage of revenues if you use Unreal Engine, Apple can rejigger the way they structure their libraries and demand a percentage of revenues from apps which use Metal. I realise that there are intellectually satisfying arguments for why UE and Metal shouldn't be treated the same, but I'm not so sure it's so easy to disentangle them in a legally satisfying way.
I'm really hoping someone wakes up and realizes the problem is not the fees but that consumers don't know about them. Let the consumer be informed about Google and Apple's rake on all their in-app charges. The outrage will take care of the rest. Not sure about Google, but Apple has deliberately prohibited developers from itemizing the 30% fee for consumers. That simple rule is what keeps their money pipe flowing. Mar…
I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees.
As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that the stores provide. I don't know if it makes the app devs life much harder or if it's just a slight inconvenience.
Do you know or do you care who is making the profits (and how much) when you buy a coke in your local grocery shop? I don't, and no matter of math and public information could make me care about it as a consumer.
I'm really hoping someone wakes up and realizes the problem is not the fees but that consumers don't know about them. Let the consumer be informed about Google and Apple's rake on all their in-app charges. The outrage will take care of the rest. Not sure about Google, but Apple has deliberately prohibited developers from itemizing the 30% fee for consumers. That simple rule is what keeps their money pipe flowing. Mar…
I strongly disagree, the problem is that the users and developers don't have any other (viable) option for distributing their mobile apps on these platforms (iOS and Android). I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees. As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that t…
For iOS it's essentially impossible, from my understanding. But there's stuff on android to let you install apps, after all?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to agree that most people wouldn't care about Google's cut. The only way to bring the fee down is to create more 'stores' where developers can sell their apps. Then the margin will completely collapse from 30% to near 0.
All in the credit processing and transactional costs and overhead (i.e. charge-backs) will be pushing 5%. If there is remotely any manual intervention for support, or even validating apps, that's going to be real money for any entity, then there's cost there. Then business overhead, marketing support, campaigns etc.. And then profit margins. I suggest a normal markup is going to look something like 8-12% for digital…
Google and Apple now offer a 15% rate to the overwhelming majority of developers. Whether you call it a response to the market or a cynical ploy to stave off Government intervention, it means small and medium developers can no longer be seen as a profit centre for these mega corporations.
Apple actually has an additional compelling argument, which is the near-total elimination of software piracy on the iOS platform. I don't know what the real-world numbers are, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if iOS developers ended up earning substantially more from the absence of piracy than they lost paying a 30% commission to Apple.
I'm really hoping someone wakes up and realizes the problem is not the fees but that consumers don't know about them. Let the consumer be informed about Google and Apple's rake on all their in-app charges. The outrage will take care of the rest. Not sure about Google, but Apple has deliberately prohibited developers from itemizing the 30% fee for consumers. That simple rule is what keeps their money pipe flowing. Mar…
I strongly disagree, the problem is that the users and developers don't have any other (viable) option for distributing their mobile apps on these platforms (iOS and Android). I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees. As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree, the problem is that the users and developers don't have any other (viable) option for distributing their mobile apps on these platforms (iOS and Android). I cannot practically create my "Awesome Store" where I have the best ranking system and I ask 0.1% for fees. As a consumer, I don't care if the fee is 30%. I have no idea of that's a lot or just the right amount of money for the services that t…
"Google and etc won't even let us tell you about how insane their tax is" is a much easier fight to win than "...also please legally mandate they allow us to run whatever we want on their phones, thanks" and both fights will probably lead to the same outcome.