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Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

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Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#121
post #47
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% isnt a payment processing fee, its a commission + infrastructure tax. You make money off your app? Because apple made it discoverable in the app store! You make money off your app, pay a share back for os/api r&d!

In perpetuity? That's pretty tough to justify when they aren't charging monthly fees to apps that have a one-time purchase price. Does it somehow cost them less money to host an app with a one-time fee? If the argument is around billing... spotify is more than willing to take that on themselves, in fact that's what they're TRYING to do, and Apple is rejecting their app because of it.

> In perpetuity?

That's a valid argument, and it's the reason why Apple is going to be reducing their cut to 15% on recurring subscriptions.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 30% doesn't bother me. What bothers me is that Apple prevents you from passing that cost on to your customers. You're not allowed to have your regular price be X and your Apple price be X+30%. That's what's anticompetitive to me. Apple is saying "we're providing a value-add, pay us" but not allowing developers to price it in to their balance sheet.

They do that to prevent this scenario: You use them to advertise your site where customers can get a discount if you bail from the app store and buy from you directly. So many developers would try that oh so clever trick that they already know better in advance. Unless you're one of the anomalies who actually does a better job at driving traffic to your apps than they can, it makes no sense to complain about this.

This is a common occurrence with Groupon.

If you call the shop and mention using Groupon, most of the time they ask you not to purchase the Groupon. They still honor the discount, but avoid a 50% take by Groupon.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#123
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app store itself is a monopoly. Apple then leverages its monopoly in app stores on Apple's platform into other business (Apple Music, eBooks, digital video, etc). This is anti-competitive behaviour and illegal. Only legal gap is declaring Apple's app store on its platform a monopoly, the second that is done then everything else naturally falls into place and Apple receives antitrust violations.

"The app store itself is a monopoly." No, it isn't. There is Google Play, Microsoft, Amazon, and a whole host of other app stores out there. Remember, the market is mobile devices altogether, not just iOS devices. "Only legal gap is declaring Apple's app store on its platform a monopoly, the second that is done then everything else naturally falls into place and Apple receives antitrust violations." Which will not ha…

It's way more complicated than that. Antitrust law doesn't care about "the market", it cares about "the relevant market", where "relevant" is a legal term of art that may or may not have anything to do actual markets.

There were 6 factors considered in establishing the relevant market in the Microsoft case (paraphrasing Court's Findings of Fact, §2)[0].

A) Servers were not cost-effective replacements for consumer hardware and were excluded from the relevant market. It's not clear whether the discrimination also goes the opposite way (e.g. instead of "smartphones" we compare "flagship smartphones"). If so, that kind of market definition would really make iOS look gigantic.

B) PowerPC and other non-Intel-compatibles were excluded from the relevant market since consumers could not install the competing OS on their hardware (that's right, "the relevant market" was constructed so as to exclude Apple, MS's only serious competitor). It is an interesting question whether the fact that you can't run Android on your iPhone for non-ISA reasons would be viewed similarly to an ISA difference in the hardware, but the way I read the ruling, it seems likely to be viewed similarly, or perhaps much worse. The reasoning all stems from whether consumers have choices to install their own OS, nothing to do with ISAs per se.

C) Various "borderline formfactors" were excluded from the relevant market. In the 90s this was e.g. WebTV, thin clients and game consoles. Today this might be things like tablets, VR platforms, chromebooks, etc. These are (today) all Android form factors, and excluding them to focus on "traditional" formfactors makes iOS look a bit larger than it does in Netcraft surveys.

D) The court observed that market conditions create a feedback loop, e.g. more people write apps for the dominant platform, that make the dominant platform more attractive to write apps for, round and round it goes, etc. This is obviously true for the smartphone market.

E) The court was concerned that nobody could realistically enter the market and "in less than a few years, present a significant percentage of consumers with a viable alternative to incumbents." This seems probable for the smartphone market, based on Mozilla and Canonical's misadventures, RIM and Nokia's inability to make a comeback, and even Windows Phone.

F) There was also a discussion about why "portals" (like today's cloud computing and/or webapps, basically) are not an effective substitute for doing computing locally and should not be in the relevant market, as well as a discussion of why Java is not a substitute for Windows (obvious to us, but not to lawyers)

All of this to say, it is really not so obvious from a legal POV why Apple are not a monopoly or are in any way different fro the Microsoft case. The real reason is probably nobody wants to sue them; I have seen estimates of the Microsoft case that suggests MS spent more than $500M defending it, and the taxpayers (with much cheaper lawyers) spent more or less $100M to prosecute it and didn't get much for their money.

Then there is the question of who gains by spending that money: Apple is well-loved by their customers so it doesn't have the election appeal for politicians that the Microsoft case did. Google would prefer to implement Apple-like policies in their store and don't want them found to be illegal. That leaves bit players like Canonical or Mozilla, and for them the legal costs are likely prohibitive.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-courts-findings-f...

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#124

I'm curious, for the people in this thread who think Apple is within their rights, would you buy a DVD player that only played DVDs purchased through their own store, charged 30% to list in the store, and disallowed companies setting a different price that covers the 30% fee?

Would you buy a game console that could only play games approved by the console manufacturer?

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#125
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Being able to install updates without asking the ISP. Why the fuck should they "ask the ISP"?

I think they meant how Apple is able to update iPhones without first getting permission from the phone carriers, whereas on Android & Windows Phone the OS updates for devices can be delayed by the carrier imposing a certification process before it is released. For example, here's an Australian phone carrier / ISP blocking updates to Google Nexus devices on their network: http://ausdroid.net/2014/12/04/yes-telstra-is-…

Is it not true Google pushes updates to their Nexus line without going through the carrier?

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#126
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The app store itself is a monopoly." No, it isn't. There is Google Play, Microsoft, Amazon, and a whole host of other app stores out there. Remember, the market is mobile devices altogether, not just iOS devices. "Only legal gap is declaring Apple's app store on its platform a monopoly, the second that is done then everything else naturally falls into place and Apple receives antitrust violations." Which will not ha…

> No, it isn't. There is Google Play, Microsoft, Amazon, and a whole host of other app stores out there. Apple has banned all of those from iOS. It allows no third party app stores. > Remember, the market is mobile devices altogether, not just iOS devices. You cannot just tack on the word "remember" to make something an established fact. We don't know what the scope of future legal decisions will be until they're in…

Anything stopping people from buying non-Apple smart phones?

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#127
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious - I see that Midomi Sound Hound now has voice recognition in iOS 9, which I assume it gets from either licensing Google Now, Cortana, or directly from the companies that provide functionality for those. Why couldn't Spotify just do that? Would that solve your problem?

You would still need to find your way to the Spotify app though, so that defeats the point -- because you have to use your hand to unlock the phone, open the app, etc. Compare this with being able to play a song by simply saying "Hey Siri play Beatles' Rain"... and that is it.

"hey siri open Spotify" works fine.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#128

I'm curious, for the people in this thread who think Apple is within their rights, would you buy a DVD player that only played DVDs purchased through their own store, charged 30% to list in the store, and disallowed companies setting a different price that covers the 30% fee?

I'm pretty sure that brick and mortar stores retain more than 30% of the sales price of DVD's.

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#129
If the claims made by Spotify that Apple was threatening to kick Spotify out of the AppStore for not taking down its $0.99 offsite signup promo then this is certainly more anti-competitive than MSIE vs Netscape. At least back in the day, if you didn't get Netscape installed but still wanted it, all you had to do was download the EXE file and install it. Now if Spotify were to be banned from the AppStore, how else would you receive its service?

Re: Apple Fires Back at Spotify for Asking for 'Preferential Treatment'

#130
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they meant how Apple is able to update iPhones without first getting permission from the phone carriers, whereas on Android & Windows Phone the OS updates for devices can be delayed by the carrier imposing a certification process before it is released. For example, here's an Australian phone carrier / ISP blocking updates to Google Nexus devices on their network: http://ausdroid.net/2014/12/04/yes-telstra-is-…

Is it not true Google pushes updates to their Nexus line without going through the carrier?

For a time at least not for Nexus phones sold on Verizon.

But why should I have to buy a Nexus phone just to receive OS updates and not get crapware?

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