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US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

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Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#201

Post by rootusrootus »

klabb3 wrote: post #103
Hikikomori wrote: post #85

If you are are ok with this you should also be ok with Apple taking a cut on anything you buy with their browser, why not also take a fee for any data going in and out of your phone.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If the web was invented today browsers would never be allowed on the App Store. Not even a dumbed down version without advanced scripting capabilities. The fact that they have a browser and allow “3p browsers” is only because the web was already established and customers wouldn’t have bought in without it. iPhones and iPads are not general purpose computing devices. Not by…

I feel like a lot of people have forgotten that we had proprietary services before the web became a thing. E.g. Compuserve, Prodigy.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#202

Post by enragedcacti »

onethought wrote: post #130
bradgessler wrote: post #54

Am I getting this right? Say I use Stripe as my payment processor. Stripe takes 2.9% + $0.30, then Apple takes 27% so I'm at 29.9% + $0.30 being taken out of however much I charge for my app? For a $10 app, $0.30 is 3% putting the fee at 32.9%. For the privilege of paying 2.9% more, my users get to see a scary privacy message and when I bill the customer a year later for a subscription, there's a 20-30% chance that t…

How can the “second most popular phone” have a monopoly?

You've already skipped over the most important aspect of determining if someone is a monopoly, which is defining the relevant market. A key piece of the Epic v. Apple case was determining the relevant market, where "phones" was never even considered as a possibility.

https://ei.com/economists-ink/fall-2021/market-definition-in...

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#203

Post by stefan_ »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
xuki wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple need the 30% to keep the services revenue up to keep the stock price up. I have no doubt many people at Apple know this is wrong, including the people at the very top, but stock must not go down.

What is the right amount of profit margin? Would this apply to households too?

It's obviously not 30%, because on top of this you better pay for ads on your app name or have your competitor show up on searches for your app.

I always had a mild smile for the tales of the "secure refined Apple store" but seeing the reality has been a bigger shock than I expected. It's a scam haven.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#204

Post by lxgr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
xuki wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple need the 30% to keep the services revenue up to keep the stock price up. I have no doubt many people at Apple know this is wrong, including the people at the very top, but stock must not go down.

What is the right amount of profit margin? Would this apply to households too?

Whatever the market is willing to pay.

We don’t know what that is, since there currently is no market.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#205

Post by GeekyBear »

enragedcacti wrote: post #189
lolinder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was always what the outcome was going to look like. People have been talking ever since the ruling as though dodging Apple as a payment processor was going to magically exempt developers from the full 30% fee, but that was never going to happen and it was never the intention of the ruling. Apple argued from the very beginning that the 30% was its fee for running the App Store, marketing the apps, and storing and…

> Apple argued from the very beginning that the 30% was its fee for running the App Store, marketing the apps, and storing and delivering the app bundles. The in-app payment system was a convenient way for Apple to collect its commission and a way for Apple to create a unified payment experience for its customers, but it was never the Achilles heel for Apple's business model. Is it just me or does this argument seem…

> Is it just me or does this argument seem insanely flimsy?

Apple being entitled to a commission regardless of who you use as a payment processor is literally part of the court ruling.

The court did not find that the size of the commission was necessarily justified, but they definitely ruled that a commission was justified.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#206

Post by zamadatix »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
xuki wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple need the 30% to keep the services revenue up to keep the stock price up. I have no doubt many people at Apple know this is wrong, including the people at the very top, but stock must not go down.

What is the right amount of profit margin? Would this apply to households too?

I would say there isn't such a thing as "the right amount of profit margin" as much as there is "the right way to secure a profit margin". The more your margin is able to exist because competition isn't allowed the less right it is, be it 1% or 99% in absolute terms.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#207

Post by chihuahua »

danenania wrote: post #60
karlshea wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's a direct comparison. Back then sure you could get shareware but mostly the market was paid boxed software. I can't find a direct source but I remember hearing brick-and-mortar retailers would take even more than 30% of sales. And Visual Studio sure wasn't free. Everything was different though, you'd be paying for your OS upgrades too which doesn't happen on iOS. I agree 30% is crazy, but the marke…

"I remember hearing brick-and-mortar retailers would take even more than 30% of sales" I'd say the key difference there is that Microsoft didn't own all those retail stores.

Right, and anyone could open a retail store and sell software with a lower mark-up.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#208

Post by dylan604 »

ralmidani wrote: post #171
dylan604 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this any different from brick&mortar big box retailers beating on their suppliers to lower their wholesale prices to the point they can only make a profit with large volume in sales? I guarantee you that 70% of your MSRP is way more than selling in a store.

One difference: physical goods suppliers can theoretically choose to sell and deliver direct any of their goods to any consumer willing to pay for them. With the app store, at least in the US, the captive audience can’t side-load, and now Apple is introducing even more absurdity with its bad faith “revision” to the policy.

That's true to an extent, and your "theoretically" is doing some heavy lifting. The big box retailers have pretty much limited your options there. So while it's not a single choice of stores, you might get 3 or 4. If you want to sell physical items, you want to be sold in Walmart. That's where the shoppers are. When you come out of the meeting where they tell you what your wholesale price will be, you won't even look like the same person. Depending on your product, you might have some other options, but those sales will be well under anything a big box can offer. You just won't be making much money per item.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#209

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

kemayo wrote: post #119

This is the same strategy that Apple pursued for dating apps in the Netherlands, after a court there forced them to allow third-party payments a year or two ago. Their argument is that the 15/30% is a general fee for use of their infrastructure (App Store, etc), and so they'll subtract the approximate cost of payment processing if you're handling it yourself but you'll still have to pay the rest of the fee to them. A…

It's the same thing here in Korea. I'm implementing a 3rd party payment processor for a client right now - same 27% fee. However, the revenue is "self reported". Allegedly, most companies lie.

Re: US developers can offer non-app store purchasing, Apple still collect commission

#210

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

justinclift wrote: post #193
stouset wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. They are reviewing submitted apps for compliance with their policies and security requirements. If you want to compare it to desktop computers, great! Compare it to the macOS App Store which… takes a 30% commission. Whether or not you personally agree that 30% is a reasonable fee, you can't simply deny that operating the app store costs mon…

> Apple is hosting, distributing, and directly marketing apps in the app store. Isn't that a forced situation though, unlike with macOS? With macOS anyone can throw an application on a website (GitHub, etc) and the users can download the application and run it. To get rid of the scary warnings, there's even a $99 dev membership that can be used to sign the macOS binaries. iOS developers don't have any choices to host…

It's been a while but I'm pretty sure signing and notarizing is required on macOS now, without disabiling SIP. At least for things downloaded from a browser. My interpretation is that $99/year is required if you want to avoid your users needing to use the terminal.
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