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The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

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Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#31

Post by ghusto »

tambourine_man wrote: post #25
lapcat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What some people may not understand is that a large percentage of Apple customers are buying iPhones because of those restrictions and not in spite of them. Citation needed. Do you have polls or other consumer research to back this claim?

I have 70% of Android global market share. It offers more choices of devices, price points and a less restrictive OS. There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. Conversely, there are plenty of things that the more open Android platform allows that iOS doesn't. And yet, despite all of that, some people still prefer to buy iPhones. I think it's their choice to make.

I didn't buy an iPhone because of the "security" that the restrictions give me, and I suspect few others who jumped ship from Android to iPhone did either.

I switched because the iPhone does what I need it to do, and then gets out of the way. It works as I need it to with my Mac, and is for the most part intuitive and well thought out. I would prefer it if I could install what I wanted from where I wanted, but it's a price I'm willing to pay. And no, allowing me to do so would not undermine any of the value I've pointed out.

I bought an iPhone _despite_ the restrictions, not because of them.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#32

Post by ghusto »

Cool. Now explain why my iPhone has FLAC codecs built in, but the Apple Music app refuses to play it (the file manager can play it natively, no extra software like VLC needed). I'm sure it has nothing to do with ALAC.

No Apple, you deliberately cripple the competition all the time — especially with music — and you're getting what you deserve.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#33

Post by consp »

lapcat wrote: post #30
tambourine_man wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 70% of Android global market share. It offers more choices of devices, price points and a less restrictive OS. There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. Conversely, there are plenty of things that the more open Android platform allows that iOS doesn't. And yet, despite all of that, some people still prefer to buy iPhones. I think it's their choice to make.

> There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. 1. This is false. There are plenty of features and apps (including my own apps!) that are exclusive to iPhone. iMessage and iCloud for example. 2. Products are not simply lists of features. There's also something important called design . 3. Don't forget vendor hardware support, software support, and resale value. I can say, from a persona…

> resale value

Even with the insane idiotic second hand Apple device prices, the refurbish shops are still going broke every time they show up, so I doubt it as good as people say.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#34

Post by TillE »

leetharris wrote: post #17

These last few legal responses from Apple are really damaging their "cool" factor. Apple has, for some time now, succeeded by staying quiet and just shipping high quality stuff. Their PR / legal team acting like children when they don't get what they want is a genuine harm to their brand. It's amazing to me that these press releases are approved.

It's a really weird return to the Steve Jobs attitude towards problems like this. Except then it was usually literally Steve writing statements and saying those things, and now it's just a faceless Apple Inc which is even less sympathetic.

I don't know who these statements are for, aside from the most devoted Apple fans. I feel like investors would be happier with shorter, more professional communication.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#35

Post by addicted »

TillE wrote: post #34
leetharris wrote: post #17

These last few legal responses from Apple are really damaging their "cool" factor. Apple has, for some time now, succeeded by staying quiet and just shipping high quality stuff. Their PR / legal team acting like children when they don't get what they want is a genuine harm to their brand. It's amazing to me that these press releases are approved.

It's a really weird return to the Steve Jobs attitude towards problems like this. Except then it was usually literally Steve writing statements and saying those things, and now it's just a faceless Apple Inc which is even less sympathetic. I don't know who these statements are for, aside from the most devoted Apple fans. I feel like investors would be happier with shorter, more professional communication.

Steve Jobs never did it publicly.

He pulled some childish moves that the public found out about (Engadget being banned from reporting on Apple when a reporter wrote about an iPhone prototype they found in a bar or something is one of the next examples I can think of) but it wasn’t Apple officially behaving childishly in public.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#36

Post by addicted »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #29
piva00 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is not taking in consideration that the argument works completely in reverse, without all the apps paying them a 30% cut, or developers investing time into creating apps for their ecosystem there would be no iOS in 2024.

I don't think this is a valid argument, because both sides of it are true. Developers invested, but so did Apple, and they did it first and took bigger risks. The App Store is packed with apps because developers saw an opportunity and wanted to seize it. Everyone's in it because it serves their interests.

This is a reversal of history.

The iPhone released without an App Store. Their original plan was very clearly to limit it to web apps. Apple, including Steve Jobs, spent a lot of time and energy explaining why web apps were the best option.

And then Apple realized, largely through apps developed for jailbroken phones which led to a lot of people jailbreaking their phones, that for iOS to really succeed they needed apps.

Windows Phone 7 is another example of this. It was a superior OS to iOS by most measures. It died almost entirely because of the lack of major apps.

If major app providers (Google, Spotify, Netflix, etc) had never made their apps available on iOS and had made them available on Android instead iOS would probably be looking like Windows Phone 7 right now.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#37

Post by lancesells »

addicted wrote: post #36
mohamedattahri wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a valid argument, because both sides of it are true. Developers invested, but so did Apple, and they did it first and took bigger risks. The App Store is packed with apps because developers saw an opportunity and wanted to seize it. Everyone's in it because it serves their interests.

This is a reversal of history. The iPhone released without an App Store. Their original plan was very clearly to limit it to web apps. Apple, including Steve Jobs, spent a lot of time and energy explaining why web apps were the best option. And then Apple realized, largely through apps developed for jailbroken phones which led to a lot of people jailbreaking their phones, that for iOS to really succeed they needed ap…

It's a symbiotic relationship like most things. Instagram, tiktok, Spotify, etc. would very likely not exist without the app store.

I'm torn in all of this because I'm not much of a fan of either company.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#38

Post by Spivak »

s_dev wrote: post #11

>and pays Apple nothing for the services that have helped make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world. It says a lot that the €100 developer fee (I'd imagine Spotify pay for multiple licences in multiple countries) that Apple consider it nothing. It probably is 'negligible' given the size of Spotify but also don't even consider highly popular apps like Spotify 'contributing' to App Store ecosystem that…

> It says a lot that the €100 developer fee (I'd imagine Spotify pay for multiple licences in multiple countries) that Apple consider it nothing

They literally do consider it nothing. I've talked to some of the devs that were responsible for implementing it and they consider it entirely a spam prevention measure. They determined that $100/account was a high enough bar to prevent people from creating hundreds of them and doesn't have the overhead of manual human ID verifications.

The most recent numbers I can can find is that there are 34 million registered devs which is a cool 3.4 billion ARR and that is 0.89% of their $380 billion revenue last year.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#39

Post by jerojero »

TillE wrote: post #34
leetharris wrote: post #17

These last few legal responses from Apple are really damaging their "cool" factor. Apple has, for some time now, succeeded by staying quiet and just shipping high quality stuff. Their PR / legal team acting like children when they don't get what they want is a genuine harm to their brand. It's amazing to me that these press releases are approved.

It's a really weird return to the Steve Jobs attitude towards problems like this. Except then it was usually literally Steve writing statements and saying those things, and now it's just a faceless Apple Inc which is even less sympathetic. I don't know who these statements are for, aside from the most devoted Apple fans. I feel like investors would be happier with shorter, more professional communication.

They probably have a WWSD (what would Steve do) attitude. I wouldn't be surprised if he's turned into an idol within the company.

In any case, most of the broad public is not really aware of these things at all. So I doubt it really tarnishes their image much.

Re: The App Store, Spotify, and Europe's thriving digital music market

#40

Post by tambourine_man »

lapcat wrote: post #30
tambourine_man wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 70% of Android global market share. It offers more choices of devices, price points and a less restrictive OS. There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. Conversely, there are plenty of things that the more open Android platform allows that iOS doesn't. And yet, despite all of that, some people still prefer to buy iPhones. I think it's their choice to make.

> There's almost nothing you can do on an iPhone that you can't on an Android. 1. This is false. There are plenty of features and apps (including my own apps!) that are exclusive to iPhone. iMessage and iCloud for example. 2. Products are not simply lists of features. There's also something important called design . 3. Don't forget vendor hardware support, software support, and resale value. I can say, from a persona…

Regarding 1, there are plenty of alternatives to iMessage and iCloud. They are even interoperable to some degree.

Essencial apps were made for Windows only back in 95-2005. Your only choice was emulation and there were no alternatives. It’s a completely different picture today.

2 and 3 are not relevant to monopoly claims.

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