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Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

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Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#151

Post by com2kid »

anonymous908213 wrote: post #106
chongli wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as you open the door to side-loading, you'll have scammers and data-siphoners force all their users to side-load so that they can completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security features. The entire iOS ecosystem is built on the App Store review process as a gatekeeper for entitlements and the capabilities they grant (through API access). How do you solve that problem for side-loaded apps?

Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so. If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software, they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There sho…

The PC app ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the App Store's, outside of, notably, Steam's locked down closed ecosystem.

Having a single way to pay, subscribe, cancel, browse apps, beta test versions, and update apps, proved to be a huge game changer for making software accessible while also minting millionaires around the world in terms of small development teams.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#152

Post by cco »

chongli wrote: post #42
someotherperson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a fee do you think you should pay to install applications on your computer? The same amount as that. Or provide alternative ways to install software. This is a problem of their own creation.

As soon as you open the door to side-loading, you'll have scammers and data-siphoners force all their users to side-load so that they can completely bypass Apple's privacy controls and security features. The entire iOS ecosystem is built on the App Store review process as a gatekeeper for entitlements and the capabilities they grant (through API access). How do you solve that problem for side-loaded apps?

My precise location data and credit card transactions are freely available on the market.

Just by companies listed on the stock market who got that data "legally" in our current walled and "safe" garden.

I appreciate a lockdown for kids and elders, but let's not pretend our data is locked safely away in this walled garden.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#153

Post by jojobas »

itake wrote: post #134
kelthuzad wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "think of the children" equivalent that is being regurgitated ad nauseam. Anyone who pretends that Apple cares about anything other than profit is lying to others and themselves. >I agree there should be personal accountability, but that clearly hasn't been working. It has been working on Android just fine. And if Apple is supposedly so concerned with security, then why did it take them so damn long to im…

Super confused. What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated. Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples. Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"? Apple is not a fast moving co…

Google is closing down because it saw what exactly Apple got away with in previous lawsuits.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#154

Post by someNameIG »

jen729w wrote: post #38
crims0n wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in this scenario would Epic then need to develop and maintain their own toolchain and SDK for their app store? The development tools and education are also worth something, Epic shouldn’t get that for free.

Dystopian story plot: Apple completely opens up the iOS platform. Do whatever you like. Also, an XCode license is now $20,000/year. Don’t like it? Build your own.

Say no one builds their own, and iPhones now only have first party apps. How many people are going to buy them now? How well did the Windows phone sell with no app support? How's the app support on the Apple Vision Pro?

The idea that devs owe Apple for use of their SDKs and API development is absurd. Apple already profits from it as people by their phones due to the amount of third party app support. See how Apple's profits go when WhatsApp, Instagram, Spotify, Netflix Uber, banking apps, are all no longer available on their devices.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#155

Post by JustExAWS »

cedws wrote: post #133
foolswisdom wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of a free market is that someone wins the competition, and the winner is then happy to figure out ways to prevent anyone from competing at all (this kind of action doesn't require a complete winner either, but I'm focusing on a thought experiment here). Ergo, if you care about maintaining a free market, then you care about limiting what kind of moves you can make in the free market, in order to preserve a…

Other than capital what prevents a new player entering the smartphone market? In the US Apple is at ~50% market share and Samsung ~30%. These are not colluding entities so there must be enough theoretical freedom to create a smartphone that claims significant market share.

Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have plenty of “capital” and they couldn’t create their own ecosystem for their own phone and convince software developers. The hardware is not really an issue. Any company with a few million can sell their own phone and get a Chinese ODM to customize it for them and white label it.

Outside of Apple and Samsung (only because they make a lot of their own parts), the phone market is a commodity race to the bottom

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#156

Post by anonymous908213 »

com2kid wrote: post #151
anonymous908213 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sideloading, AKA "installing software on your device", is something PCs have been handling just fine for decades. It's fine to warn the user when they're going off the beaten trail, but do not lock them in a cage to prevent them from doing so. If they ignore the warnings and get scammed because they are unable to identify reputable software from disreputable software, they learn a life lesson. Life goes on. There sho…

The PC app ecosystem is a tiny fraction of the App Store's, outside of, notably, Steam's locked down closed ecosystem. Having a single way to pay, subscribe, cancel, browse apps, beta test versions, and update apps, proved to be a huge game changer for making software accessible while also minting millionaires around the world in terms of small development teams.

In 2024, computer software generated around $373b in revenue while mobile apps generated around $522b. Given that smartphone usage is significantly higher worldwide than computer usage (around 2 to 1 ratio), the stats do not really support your thesis that locking down software access to the whims of a monopoly hegemon results in a massive financial boon to application developers. Even if it did, it still would not justify the harm to the end user entailed, but it also just doesn't do what you say it does to begin with.

Incidentally, while looking this up, I discovered that 2/3rds of that $522b in app revenue comes from in-app advertisements. And here somebody was trying to mock Windows for being adware friendly circa 2005. Good lord.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#157

Post by someNameIG »

crims0n wrote: post #11

Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something .

What's Apples profit margins on their hardware? Just from that they're already getting what all that is worth.

The 30% app store cut is just rent seeking.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#158

Post by musicale »

crims0n wrote: post #11

Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something .

> platform development

It's almost 100% platform development. The iPhone is a walled-garden game platform and Apple treats it like one.

To answer your question, it probably isn't sensible to expect Apple to charge a drastically different platform fee in its game store compared to what is charged for other walled-garden game platforms and stores like the Nintendo eShop.

It may be worth noting that Amazon's Luna game service can work on the iPhone in a web browser, so game streaming isn't exactly an Apple-enforced monopoly.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#159

Post by JustExAWS »

kelthuzad wrote: post #149
itake wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super confused. What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I stated. Most of the fraud at my job comes from the android platform, because the security model on android is much worse than Apples. Why is Google citing fraud as a reason to lock down android if "its been working on android just fine"? Apple is not a fast moving co…

>Super confused. You aren't confused, you just have a preferred narrative. Hardcore Apple fans and Apple shareholders share a similar bias with different variations of 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' >What do you mean its been working on Android just fine? Google just announced they are closing their ecosystem exactly for the reasons I state…

You realize in the very WSJ article you cited it said this?

> A similar vulnerability exists in Google’s Android mobile operating system. However, the higher resale value of iPhones makes them a far more common target, according to law-enforcement officials. “Our sign-in and account-recovery policies try to strike a balance between allowing legitimate users to retain access to their accounts in real-world scenarios and keeping the bad actors out,” a Google spokesman said.

Re: Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B

#160

Post by hansvm »

crims0n wrote: post #11

Honest question, what do people think is a fair percentage? The platform development, app hosting, payment processing, and quality control is surely worth something .

Even framing it as a percentage is a category error. If they're providing services, we should be able to pay for the cost of those services.

Beyond that, the app store is worth something in aggregate to app developers, but it's worth _more_ to Apple. Without the app store the iOS ecosystem doesn't exist. Without Apple, developers work on the next best platform. Under that framing, shouldn't Apple be paying developers to not leave the platform?

The fact that neither of those things is happening (total rent is disproportionately larger than the services provided, and the net flow of cash is toward the beneficiary of value rather than away from it) points to a monopoly worth breaking down. Those aren't hard rules, but they're suggestive facts.

Actually answering your question: Payment processors charge up to 5% and do more due diligence and have more overhead than Apple, so if I had to name a percentage on every transaction (a viewpoint I already disagree with), 5% would be a hard upper bound. IME, the value Apple provides from their "services" in that space is usually negative aside from the fact that you have to do business with them, so I think the actual price should be much less.

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