What a joke! Apple made a product people enjoy using and an App Store people trust. Now, companies are complaining that Apple is stifling innovation because their App Store is charging 30% and making competitive products. Tough shit. It's their walled garden. Don't build for the App Store if you're afraid of competition.
Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
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Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#32" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter." That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.
Don't sell on the App Store if you can't handle the 30% margin.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it. I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products, for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee market operators provide services to facilitate the s…
Just as a point of precision, Target does not technically set the price of any given manufacturer's goods. What they do when you get to that point in your talks with them, (and only if you're not ginormous), is to strongly suggest that you sell your product at such and such price. If you don't, they're gonna walk and sign on your competitor instead. It's devilishly ingenious, because, as I found out the hard way, in…
Ok my mistake, I thought target purchased goods at wholesale price and then re-sold them at whatever price they wanted. So Target was a good example after all.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#34Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple: https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-everybody-59030...
I feel strongly that his comparison to Target doesn't really apply. Shopping at Target can be compared to browsing the App Store, but it should not be compared to In App Purchases.
When you install an app from the App Store, Apple obviously is involved because they are providing the marketplace. It's like walking up to the cashier at Target and paying for a laptop. Of course Target gets a cut, it's their store. But after you take that laptop home, Target doesn't have a claim on anything related to it anymore. If you use that same laptop to sign up for Spotify, Target doesn't have claim to a 30% cut of the Spotify subscription.
I wonder how Apple would feel if Target started requiring a 30% cut from Apple for every app store purchase made on iPhones that were bought at Target?
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#35" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter." That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.
Netflix doesn't give up 30% or 15%. It's listed as an example of a "Reader" app, so Netflix subscriptions take place entirely outside of Apple's infrastructure[0] and therefore Apple get zero of that money. > How do you make any money... The remaining 70%/85% is a pretty good start. As they say before that point, "developers have earned more than $120 billion worldwide" [0] The point Apple glosses over here is that N…
Fair enough. Still a rather large margin.
More to the article's/ your point, not being able to provide a link back to your app is kind of kind of anti-competitive. They want you to subscribe using their own systems.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#36It's funny that Apple shows competing alternatives to Safari on iOS when in fact all iOS browsers use the same engine.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I remember from conversations here recently about anti-trust, is that it all depends on how the "market" is defined. Apple has a non-monopoly share of the smartphone market, or even the app market, but they do have a monopoly share of the iPhone market. Sometimes, that's the relevant metric.
By that logic, any manufacturer who doesn’t produce a commodity is automatically a monopolist.
Not just any arbitrary one, but certainly one that is big enough is a monopolist. This seems obviously true to me.
The big insight from Lina Khan's work is that harm to consumer welfare is sufficient but not necessary for an entity to be a monopoly. Bigness itself is a problem for society.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#38But the most interesting parts of this new site relate to competition. In one section, Apple goes over the core, built-in apps on iOS and lists the many popular third-party options that are available from the App Store in each category as alternatives.
I dare someone to try it. Take all of the default apps and hide them away in a folder somewhere and replace all of them with alternatives. Let me know 1) the quality of your user experience and 2) of all of the annoyances, how many of them are due to the lack of "special" capabilities and integration only available to the in-house apps?
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#39" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter." That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.
Netflix doesn't give up 30% or 15%. It's listed as an example of a "Reader" app, so Netflix subscriptions take place entirely outside of Apple's infrastructure[0] and therefore Apple get zero of that money. > How do you make any money... The remaining 70%/85% is a pretty good start. As they say before that point, "developers have earned more than $120 billion worldwide" [0] The point Apple glosses over here is that N…
Netflix only recently removed in-app subscriptions; before that they were paying X% to Apple for every subscriber who paid via iTunes. And still are for anyone who is still paying that way. Although surely it was a sweetheart deal always below 30%, and potentially below the 15%.
Re: Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple
#40Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple: https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-everybody-59030...
He was also recently on a podcast with Mark Gurman:
https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1133500919667187712