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Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#91

Post by paxys »

judge2020 wrote: post #86
deadmutex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this allowed under iOS?

PWAs have acceptable (but not full) support on iOS 14 and 15, you just are forced to ask customers to “press the share button then press add to Home Screen” for it to install to the Home Screen like a regular app.

"Acceptable" is a stretch. There is no way of discovery, say via the App Store. There is no "Add to Home Screen" button (apps can only tell users to open safari settings and do it themselves). There are no push notifications or background sync/fetch. No way to play background media. Full screen doesn't work for anything outside of video. Only a small part of the web manifest file is recognized. The cache limit is a tiny 50MB, which will be purged in 7 days.

Here is a very detailed post on this – https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#92

Post by Gigachad »

dcchambers wrote: post #48
notsrg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this is that using Apple Pay would be more expensive and so why would anyone use it?

Security and peace-of-mind, as the other commenter requested. Convenience - already having a credit card linked and ready to go. Also who is to say the developer would charge less? Let's say, for example, a company called ezpay charges $1 per transaction. If an IAP costs $10, they make $7 off the user who buys via Apple, and $9 off the user that buys via ezpay API in the app. They could lower the ezpay price to $8 an…

Virtually no one is concerned with the security of card payments on non apple processors. They have been typing their card numbers in to stripe/paypal/etc for years.

Only the tiniest % of HN idealists will pay 30% extra to have it go through Apple.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#93

Post by Gigachad »

dcchambers wrote: post #50
vanattab wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure they wouldn't considering it would be 15%-20% cheaper?

Who is to say the developer would charge less? Let's say, for example, a company called ezpay charges $1 per transaction. If an IAP costs $10, the dev makes $7 off the user who buys via Apple, and $9 off the user that buys via ezpay API in the app. They could lower the ezpay price to $8 and still only make $7, but why bother?

Because another company will offer the same product for slightly cheaper now that their fees are lower.

Google One already charges you less if you subscribe via web or android. They just haven't been allowed to advertise this fact in the iOS app.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#94

Post by likeabbas »

didibus wrote: post #58
concinds wrote: post #3

I don't see the point. Spotify's not willing to give up 10% of their Android revenue, they'll still use their own payment. Epic won't give up 15%. South Korea mandated that apps be allowed to have custom payment methods within apps. Why would any big company, whether Netflix, Epic or Spotify, still give Android 10%? It just seems that the "app store pay toll" is getting less and less justifiable; and it seems outrage…

On the desktop, ton of apps don't do their own payments. It takes quite a lot for a company to be able to process their own payments. That's why you see a lot of pay with PayPal, Amazon, Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. So I think for sure people will still offer Apple Pay. The difference is that there'd be competition now, so Apple would be forced to reduce their margins to the minimum, maybe close to cost price to compe…

It’s pretty easy to integrate Stripe as a payment processor and they only take 3%

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#95

Post by toyg »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #90
hbn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why would webapps give Apple complete control? Someone develops a webapp, I can make my own phone and anyone who wants to continue using all the webapps they were using in Safari on their iPhone can come over and do that in the browser on my phone. People develop native apps for the iPhone, and suddenly leaving the iPhone means leaving behind all those apps.

It's the other way around. WebApps at the time would have been a complete joke since mobile browsers were so limited. At least that's how I understand it. He just didn't want any third party apps. He wanted to make every app in-house. (For example the original YouTube app was an in-house project.) It sounds crazy but at the time the wild west of apps on the desktop meant that the user experience was pretty poor and a…

> It has been said that Microsoft's failure to fix these issues is really what drove web application development.

Nah, what drove web development was 100% ease of deployment. No more dealing with installers that don't work and people who don't know how to use them, the browser is already there; no more dealing with the pain of rolling out updates, you push to your own server and it's done. And you don't have to care about Windows stack vs Mac stack with completely different teams, a few css/js tweaks and you're done. Sun understood the issue and tried to put up a fight with their Java Web Start, but in the end the JRE still required an installer, with all the related issues. MS eventually got something like that working seamlessly, but it was 15 years too late.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#96

Post by willseth »

dcchambers wrote: post #22

I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors. I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to…

> The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself.

One major kink in this idea is that it breaks the free tier model, since paid apps are essentially subsidizing free ones. If you can use any payment processor in-app, then developers will make their apps nominally "free" for App Store purposes, and then use the payment processor of their choice in-app, circumventing Apple's ability to collect any fee whatsoever. So how do you address this problem without charging every developer, even if they were otherwise willing to give away their app?

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#97

Post by [deleted] »

dcchambers wrote: post #22

I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors. I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to…

[deleted]

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#98

Post by lern_too_spel »

willseth wrote: post #96
dcchambers wrote: post #22

I think people are focused on the wrong issue. The fee % is not the problem. The problem is the restriction against using other types of payment processors. I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to…

> The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself. One major kink in this idea is that it breaks the free tier model, since paid apps are essentially subsidizing free ones. If you can use any payment processor in-app, then developers will make their apps nominally "free" for App Store purposes, and then use the payment processor…

They would still be required to report that they have in-app purchases, just like they are currently required to report they have ads, even if they aren't using Apple's or Google's ad APIs.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#99

Post by AnthonyMouse »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #53
realusername wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want it one step further, it's not called "sideloading" but just "normal install", people should be able to install anything they want without some unwanted middleman, all the restrictions are just market distortions.

Problem is we need an Appstore with enforcing rules nowadays to protect ourselves from greedy ruthless software makers. Just look at Windows - and ecosystem where Software mostly is installed outside of an Appstore. What major players in the Industry do now (Big players like Adobe but also other smaller shops) would have been considered malware/adware some 10 years ago. Stuff like uploading personal data, contents of…

> Even on Linux you can see that this "moderation" is beneficial. No software will land in the repositories that spy on the users, and its uncommon to install software outside those repos that ship with your distro.

Which demonstrates that this works perfectly well without restricting users from installing software outside of the repositories.

You want the App Store to exist. You don't want it to be mandatory.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#100

Post by [deleted] »

paxys wrote: post #91
judge2020 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PWAs have acceptable (but not full) support on iOS 14 and 15, you just are forced to ask customers to “press the share button then press add to Home Screen” for it to install to the Home Screen like a regular app.

"Acceptable" is a stretch. There is no way of discovery, say via the App Store. There is no "Add to Home Screen" button (apps can only tell users to open safari settings and do it themselves). There are no push notifications or background sync/fetch. No way to play background media. Full screen doesn't work for anything outside of video. Only a small part of the web manifest file is recognized. The cache limit is a t…

[deleted]
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