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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%

#131

Post by reissbaker »

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…

Given that so much of Apple's profits are from extortionate App Store fees... I can't help but think this is a classic "commodify your complement" strategy from Google. The lion's share of Google's revenue comes from search: if cutting subscription fees on the Play Store forces Apple to cut their take on the App Store by half, then Apple loses considerably more than Google — and Apple's loss is Google's gain. And if Apple doesn't cut their rate... It's a lot harder for them to argue to regulators that they shouldn't be forced into having oversight, since it's no longer standard to take so much.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#134

Post by alexjurkiewicz »

reissbaker wrote: post #131
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…

Given that so much of Apple's profits are from extortionate App Store fees... I can't help but think this is a classic "commodify your complement" strategy from Google. The lion's share of Google's revenue comes from search: if cutting subscription fees on the Play Store forces Apple to cut their take on the App Store by half, then Apple loses considerably more than Google — and Apple's loss is Google's gain. And if…

Search and Play Store come from the same company, but is play store revenue really a complement to search? How does removing play store fees improve Google's search moat?

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#135

Post by dbt00 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #42
sofixa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, i want app stores. It's million times better than the default Windows situation downloading random binaries off the Internet. Code signing and malware signature matching are at best bandaids on a waterfall. Having a centralised place with reviews categories, updates etc. is very valuable.

webOS in the Palm/HP Pre days and Maemo both had app stores. webOS had the App Catalog and Maemo built an app store around the apt package manager. The difference is that Palm, HP and Nokia didn't take a cut, and the stores themselves were based on open protocols that allowed users to add their own sources for apps. That resulted in excellent things like PreWare[1] and, in Maemo's case, enthusiast run apt repositorie…

None of those platforms got big enough to deal with abuse and malware at an industrial scale.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#137

Post by kevingadd »

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…

There's no way the model would actually break when Apple pulls in tens of billions USD every year off the App Store, a lot of it provided by whales in gacha games and online gambling services. A single one of those would be enough to keep the store humming (there are a few specific ones that bring in a billion usd a year by themselves)

They could also just require developers to pay them a set % of gross even when using third-party payment processors. There is precedent for this, for example Sony requires this in order to approve cross-play between Playstation and other platforms. It could also be treated as a royalty model where you give them say 5% of your gross revenue to use the iOS platform and the 5% is baked into the normal 30% store cut (Unreal Engine works this way.)

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#138

Post by calsy »

Denzel wrote: post #52
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.

> people should be able to install anything they want without some unwanted middleman What “people” are you referring to? The millions of people, like yours truly, who’ve made the conscious decision to pay Apple because of their App Store model. I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone. So…

Yeah everything super easy when you control the entire process, from what apps you will see, to how you purchase them. There is no conscious decision to chose to pay with apple. You either purchase an apps subscription through apples payment gateway or not.

Alternative solution are convoluted because Apple makes it that way, it's by design. You are paying more than you need to, and developers get less then they should.

People complain about 1% surcharge on a visa, which is made clear before each purchase. Apple takes 30% and they hide the fact from consumers. But it's all so smooth, you hardly notice you're spending money it's so convenient. Is that so surprising when the company controlling the OS also controls how you pay for products they didnt make?

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#139

Post by philistine »

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…

You want a PWA app to do all that, you have to wrap it inside an app and put it on the App Store.

Re: Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%

#140

Post by leucineleprec0n »

thetrb wrote: post #6
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…

My view is that it's an effort to avoid regulation. It's easier to justify a fee of 10-15% to regulators than a flat 30% fee.

Of course.
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