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Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

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Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#471

Post by donor20 »

mdoms wrote: post #339
donor20 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good lord - on HN the monopoly comments are so crazy sometimes. What is the monopoly issue Apple has? Use android if you don't like Apple's product line. Apple is at 22% share.

The comment you're responding to never used the word "monopoly", what are you talking about?

Good point - my mistake there for sure! I was also responding to a comment saying Apple should be broken apart at same time.

I'm mostly responding to the strong comments - in this case "digging their own antitrust grave."

While falling into an anti-trust grave would be very serious - we are a fairs ways away from that here I think.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#472

Post by donor20 »

smiley1437 wrote: post #334
cma wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is at a much higher dollar share of the high-spending consumer segment that is relevant to app developers.

But could it be that the extra 30% Apple charges goes partly towards curating apps and ensuring they work well and are reasonably secure? And that the high-spending consumer segment appreciates this?

Exactly this - I'm a "high spending" customer. Because they take pretty good care of their store, because there are no surprise auto-renewals and on and on I spend money freely - it's pretty safe to.

I always seem to regret signing up for subscriptions elswhere. Did anyone have the myheritage fight - I did that 5 years ago - total nightmare. I mean - how is stuff like THAT legal (hadn't used service in a year, no notice prior to the renewal being billed), no way to get out of paying.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#474

Post by girishso »

KMnO4 wrote: post #262
girishso wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s UDID registration website?

In order to test developer beta releases, you need a paid Apple developer account. Obviously it wouldn't be great if you had to pay $99 for every device (or employee at your business) just to test on the latest beta release, so Apple allows you to register up to 100 devices on your paid developer account. Some people realized that they could sell each of those 100 slots at $5-10 to people who really wanted to use the…

Cool. Somehow never heard of this. Your username reminded me of my school days!

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#475

Post by yazaddaruvala »

aaomidi wrote: post #422
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My conversation with you was entirely about "the iPhone being a general purpose computer". It seems we have both settled that either an iPhone is not general purpose, or all consoles, TVs or IOT devices with downloadable content are general purpose devices. If you'd like we can now start discussing if the price Apple charges is fair. I've already stated, the market decides to buy iPhones understanding (even appreciat…

Sure make them general computers too. I would rather have all of these devices give more choices to users. However the current focus is on Apple due to their size.

I'll reiterate:

I've already stated, the market decides to buy iPhones understanding (even appreciating) that the user cannot side-load non-Apple approved apps (other than through a less trusted channel i.e. the browser). As such the market through demand, has decided there is a niche ecosystem where 30% fees for in app purchases are appropriate and fair.

Why is this market dynamic an issue given there are so many games and tons of competition on and off iOS?

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#476

Post by skdd8 »

lancepioch wrote: post #403
smnrchrds wrote: post #160

Discussion of Apple topics here on HN almost always gets reduced to the argument that Apple is not a monopoly, so what they are doing is OK. I want to present an alternative viewpoint. It's not a monopoly issue, it is an anti-competitive issue. In Canada, we have three major cell carriers. None of them has a monopoly, or anything close to it. None of them has even 50% market share. You can have a 10 GB smartphone pla…

You gave an example of price fixing, not anti competitive behavior. They don't have to meet up in a secret room either for it to count. If they are constantly adjusting their prices to all be exactly the same, that is illegal in the U.S. as price fixing.

Exactly! The example just describes a cartel of companies that have an understanding of non-competition. If it was a truly competitive the prices, features and offers would always be better to attract customers all the time.

While 30% is steep I don’t think Apple is at fault here. You wanna be able to use their carefully constructed walled garden with security protections, servers, payment system and users? You have to pay to play.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#477

Post by valuearb »

Androider wrote: post #452
valuearb wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The store facilitates discovery of your app, secure installation of your app, world wide distribution of your app, and offers customers a safe, trustworthy, consistent and easy to use purchasing system complete with refunds, subscriptions cancellation for all purchases. One of the biggest developer benefits is Apples app reviews process. While not perfect for devs, it helps ensure customers feel safe buying my apps f…

I'm sure Epic would be willing to forgo all those things, if they could have iOS visitors to their own site click a download button, up pops the ol' install app OS dialog (same as now), face ID / passcode, bam, Fortnite is installed.

Of course they would but that’s parasitical. That’s how iOS turns into the Android dumpster fire.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#478

Post by irrational »

agentdrtran wrote: post #398
zo1 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motives matter, and taking the motives of foreign-owned businesses into account when dealing with one of the largest businesses in the US is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What if the motive behind this is to just destabilize the price of Apple? What if it's part of a large campaign to destabilize a lot of US companies, not just this one?

I think Apple will be fine if it's forced to allow non-app store payments, Google seems to be doing fine

Except Apple and Google make money from different things. Google makes money from selling your data. So they are fine with giving away software and turn a blind eye to side-loading of apps. Apple makes money from selling hardware and making a cut on software.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#479

Post by valuearb »

ctvo wrote: post #432
valuearb wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple breaks out a services line in their financial reports. You should read them. Services has a gross margin of around 67-68%, but that includes a $9B check from Google every year with near 100% margins. So the App Store is very likely to be less than 67%, maybe as low as 15%. It’s not just payment processing. They provide other critically valuable services to developers such as App Review, Hosting, International D…

Please provide anything to back up these claims. Until you provide something, here's a breakdown from Forbes of an estimate of Apple's App Store revenue in 2019: https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/7JGMQ7wT/Bre... (there's an adjustment to the take percentage to see their estimated revenue if it's lowered, feel free to play around with it) Apple Services: - AppStore $ 15 billion - Licencing $ 10 billion -…

Read their financials, the gross margins for services are listed in every one of their reports.

And the $99 and ad revenues are service revenues. So their audited financials say, taking all of those revenues, that services expenses are roughly 32% of their revenues. Obviously this doesn’t include administration costs, interest costs or taxes.

32% of 30% is 9.6%, so it’s possible that’s their break even level, or even a little lower if App Store margins are higher than other services. But it’s unlikely because it’s likely the billions in the Google Safari placement check is close to 100% margin, meaning the rest of services has to have margins well under 68%.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#480

Post by pythonaut_16 »

donor20 wrote: post #462
pythonaut_16 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geographic area is an interesting term here. If you take "iPhone owners" as a geographic area, then Apple has a 100% monopoly on that market. Geographic area == captive audience, and since iPhone users are a captive audience of the app store. I think there's a reasonable argument that users buy iPhones with the expectation of a market in the app store (I can get or buy apps from any company that cares to develop one)…

I suppose the next case will be against Walmart for not allowing me to setup my own kiosk with my own payment processor in their store if you define markets in this way. They have a monopoly in their stores on sales of items.

Walmart clearly falls under a geographic area. There's a physical store. You can measure the competition in that geographic area and you can look at what other choices consumers have.

An iPhone is clearly a different case. Measuring what options users have is not limited by a geographic region but by what policies and app stores govern the device.

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