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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

#351

Post by freedomben »

thisislife2 wrote: post #292
theshrike79 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel that Google is less bad in this, enough so that you would rather use their products?

No, Google isn't less bad (and I avoid them using Sailfish OS and non-Google ROMs (Lineage OS / Graphene OS). I don't believe either Google or Apple (or any other BigTech) should have any role in deciding what apps I install on my phone or how I choose to purchase (not rent) an app. (I mean, they just act as an unnecessary middle-man and gatekeeper to extort money). The smartphone is just another computer. I don't pa…

Apple (and subsequently many other copy-cats in the tech industry) have done a phenomenal job convincing people to think of their fully capable mobile computers as "appliances", and this really shows.

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

#352

Post by freedomben »

cedws wrote: post #60
bitpush wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you plug in a non-Apple USB cable to charge your iPhone, or use a third-party phone case, or use Anker power bank .. do you wish you had none of these choices, but only use whatever Apple branded cables, and phonecase and power banks existed? If you want to buy Apple cables because you think it is better, sure - that's great. But preventing ugreen cables from working makes no sense. You shouldnt say 'buy a diffe…

Being on the side of the consumer means being on the side of the free market. If you don’t like the charging options of an iPhone, don’t buy an iPhone. If you don’t like the OS of a Pixel, don’t buy a Pixel. If the consumer is choosy and doesn’t like the options available then there is a market opportunity for new entrants.

I personally think this is a reasonable argument in theory, though in practice it's not a free market when governments and large mandatory institutions (like banks) put in place things that force your hand (Digital ID on your attested device, banking apps that require attestation, etc). It also falls down when you realize the barriers of entry are absolutely enormous. Even Amazon and Microsoft couldn't get through them, so what chance do new entrants have?

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

#353

Post by shuckles »

lozenge wrote: post #243
shuckles wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow sounds very comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered. Sounds like you agree with me that they just made it up? Or are you saying that it's fair to exclude the app store of an open platform which has plenty of "free market" competition from side loaded and 3p distribution apps because ~vibes~?

Not considered? The words "Google Play" are in the judgment 47 times. Maybe you could read it? By your logic, each of the two companies could use the other as an example and then both get away with breaking competition law. Two wrongs don't make a right.

> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered

Interesting to accuse people of not reading the document in a post where you don’t read a 3 sentence comment.

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

#354

Post by giobox »

JimDabell wrote: post #111
giobox wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those that do mostly have to pay 15% This case only concerns Apple's App Store fees before 2020; it was a blanket 30% charge for paid apps until they introduced those changes following the whole Epic Games legal saga etc. Apple are not paying a penalty for anything after 2020 when the new rules allowing those with lower turnover to pay 15% came into effect etc. > It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of…

> During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%. This is still not correct. The original claim was “every single business on the planet”. That’s ridiculously overstated. Even if you massively narrow the scope to only businesses that have iOS apps that make money directly through the app, it’s still not true. The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps. Take Uber,…

> The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps

This is not correct at all and grossly misrepresents how Apple collects revenues on the store - the 30% applied to the list price of any paid app as well.

Prior to 2020, if your app had a price tag on the app store, you paid 30% of said price to apple on every sale. There is no ifs, no buts, no lower rate for smaller players like today. You had a price tag, you paid 30%, whether you sold 100m copies or 5.

The decision taken by the CAT here concerns the fee for paid apps (what they call the distribution charge) as well as in app fees, the latter of which had some exemptions for specific transaction types from the likes of Amazon, Uber etc (but famously not Spotify or Epic Games, or the Amazon Kindle app etc etc...). The "distribution charge" did not.

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

#355

Post by array_key_first »

wkat4242 wrote: post #296
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find headlines like this much more appropriate when placed in terms of days of revenue: "Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near 2 days of revenue!" I feel like fines aren't even an appropriate remedy for this. They're both inherently arbitrary and not something that actually fixes it. And that combination gives governments a perverse incentive, because they get $2B to put in their own pockets…

You can't jail a company. And breaking one up is pretty much impossible considering the geopolitical pressures on huge companies like this.

It's also not really desirable to punish a company or dissolve it. It's mostly made up of laborers - you can bet your ass C-Suite is gonna be A-Okay. Also, we don't really want to just burn the IP. That stuff is useful.

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

#356

Post by array_key_first »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #329
amelius wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? If a shoplifter steals from one shop, the judge will not take into consideration all the shops they didn't steal from.

Charging devs a percentage App Store sales is very different from shoplifting and equating the two is extremely misleading. Devs voluntarily choose to publish apps on the App Store and doing so gets them both another discovery channel and a low-friction sales channel. Stores being robbed by shoplifters don't voluntarily enter that arrangement and they get no benefit from it.

It's only somewhat voluntary, as there is literally no other option to get your application on people's iPhones.

For most companies, the choice is: pay Apple, or dissolve your company.

That's not much of a choice, and I think we all know it.

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

#357

Post by criddell »

benoau wrote: post #349
criddell wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do so many people quote the 30% number? Only apps with more than $1,000,000 annual revenue are paying 30%. Most apps are smaller than that and are hit with a 15% fee.

Because the 30% is "opt-in" not automatic, the $1m threshold applies to all your apps and associated accounts apps combined, and $1m is just not a big target anymore considering 8400 people on $10/month subscriptions will get you over that line. And of course, when they announced this big discount it was reported to apply to about 5% of actual IAP spending, which would make the average commission fee being paid aroun…

> $1m is just not a big target anymore

Yes it is. The percentage of developers in the App Store who make more than $1 million per year is tiny.

According to this analysis[1], it's a single digit percentage. Hardly anybody pays 30%.

[1]:https://sensortower.com/blog/app-store-revenue-share-analysi...

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

#358

Post by amelius »

manquer wrote: post #344
amelius wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look I'm not going to say the analogy is perfect. No analogy ever is. But at a fundamental level, they are breaking the law to extract money from people. You may not call that stealing, but imho it's not a huge stretch of reality.

UK government is just taking their cut, they aren't returning the money to anyone. So what difference does it make to the regular joe that the loan shark got shook down by the mafia boss ?

The difference is that the shark is now disincentivized to do it again.

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

#359

Post by array_key_first »

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.

Arbitrary software limitations such as apps not running on said phone.

The apple iPhone is a locked down system engineered in such a way to extract maximum value from consumers and developers. It is impossible to compete.

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

#360

Post by shuckles »

troupo wrote: post #343
shuckles wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider Google Play, for starters.

They have a literal section "(6) Description of the “comparator” platforms" where the very first item is "(a) Google and other Android platforms" There's a section "112. On 10 June 2022, the CMA published the final report in its MEM Study, which contains a number of findings in relation to both Apple and Google." It's amazing that you never even tried to read the actual document but already immediately assume a posit…

> comparable yet notably omitted from the ranges the tribunal considered

Interesting to accuse people of not reading the document in a post where you don’t read a 3 sentence comment (and reply to the wrong one, but we can chalk that up to HN UI).

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