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Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

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Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#531

Post by ipaddr »

arthurcolle wrote: post #399
ipaddr wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want Apple to pick 100 big apps and promote them? That would take away from the smaller person's chance. That list grows stale and complaints over who is on the list starts.

The arbitrary integer n = 100 is out of place, comparing your example with GP's comment. The commenter is totally right - the Mac App Store is just a gimmick in the same way that the iOS App Store is a total gimmick to accumulate fees from app developers. The fact that the review system is so broken is a pure indictment of the model itself.

Using reviews seems like the fairest idea 10 years ago. Society has changed. Couldn't they take reviews/rating on every app from the public, critics and other stats like downloads to create a scoring system like rotten tomatoes?

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#532

Post by wins32767 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #481
wins32767 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it's have the policy or be broken up the CEO will be pressured to not let them bend it...

The stick only works if you actually get the stick if it's merited, though. So it could easily end up actually being broken up under your proposal.

Not really. The risk to a CEO of having to deal with an angry government is waaaaaay more than the benefit from internal teams not having to deal with a bad process.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#533

Post by JimDabell »

megablast wrote: post #489
bostik wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30% was highway robbery from the start. Pure and simple. It was merely a less awful deal than most other indie commission models, with sites like Kongregate and their ilk demanding >80%. Against that kind of flaying and skinning, 30% was an improvement! I've said it before. A very good agent, who actually works for their client and arranges them with repeat lucrative contracts, gets 15%. App stores, as gatekeepers to…

> 30% was highway robbery from the start. Pure and simple. Except it wasn't. Try getting an app published before the app store. It was 70% if you were lucky enough to find someone to publish it. You have no idea what you are talking about.

I was there at the start and people were really happy about the App Store terms. The convenience of Stripe etc. didn’t exist and taking payments on mobile was a big, expensive effort lacking consumer trust. All of a sudden Apple comes in and handles hosting, payments, installation, etc. for you in a way people will actually use, without you having to incorporate or set up a merchant account. It was a huge convenience!

The things people complained about were the opaque, buggy, barely documented code signing processes; inconsistent, undocumented, NDAed rules (no published review guidelines and you couldn’t tell people why your application was rejected!); and incredibly slow review times (weeks!).

The idea that Apple introduced the 30% fee and people recoiled with horror is revisionist history. People jumped in with both feet for that because of the convenience Apple was offering around easily getting people to pay money and having it end up in your bank account.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#534

Post by simondotau »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #480
mikehearn wrote: post #404

I have a question about monopolies and market abuses. Apple released their phone in 2007, the App Store in 2008, and in-app payments in 2009. During that time their marketshare was fairly small, and it didn't start to really grow until they expanded availability to the Verizon network in 2011. Right at launch of the App Store, Apple announced its sales commission would be 30%. Then they extended that same fee to in-a…

> I'm mentioning all of this history to make this point: Apple made these rules when they were not a monopoly by any definition. They are a monopoly for getting your app on ios phones and in front of ios users. This is why bundling is part of anti-trust law. Bundling their app store as the only way to install applications on ios devices should have been stopped years ago.

Selling a device that does multiple things isn't bundling under anti-trust rules.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#535

Post by orhmeh09 »

arcticbull wrote: post #502
neonbones wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sound reasonable, and I see additional payment systems as improvement mostly. But I have concerns about additional stores, not about entropy and all the multistore problem from a UX perspective, but as a privacy threat. I like the current Apple politics "we are a hardware company, not another user data selling platform," and they do great things in that way. But what happens, if Facebook move their apps to their stor…

In the Tim Cook era they are now (or are now transitioning into) a services company. Steve would have murdered anyone who proposed putting a 90 day Apple TV+ upsell in Settings on a new phone. Out the airlock. Instantly. They’re moving to selling subscriptions and data is critical to that. Strict rules would actually give them a huge edge over their other services competitors on platform and if they could couch it in…

Do you remember MobileMe? Jobs was in charge when its 60-day demo shipped with OS X: https://www.dummies.com/computers/macs/how-to-decide-whether...

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#536

Post by simondotau »

karatinversion wrote: post #409
vineyardmike wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many other apps or services went under (or were never made in the first instance) because Apple decided that their business needed to pay them a 30% cut of everything. Probably very few apps fit this. This rule basically only applies to digital goods, which are "free" to manufacture. There is some fixed server/dev costs, but its practically "free" to serve n+1 users. This applies especially true to games where…

Hmm, I don’t think the marginal analysis tells the whole story here. If you imagine a business that made revenue through sales through an App Store without a 30% tax, with a 20% profit margin, that’s a healthy business. With the 30% cut, they lose 10% and go under. These missing smaller players are the deadweight loss from the cut. You either need the scale to cover your fixed costs from a reduced revenue stream, or…

You're looking at it wrong. The 30% store fee was a known cost of doing business before anyone spent money building the product. That cost would have been built into a determination of whether they'll need to set a retail price of $9 or $7.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#537

Post by simondotau »

xondono wrote: post #366
the_solenoid wrote: post #331

All of these policies coming about are for the benefit of already monied interests and do not help small devs, or consumers. I also take huge umbrage that the framing of this is just as horrible as the framing of paying taxes in the US. People think, wrongly, that they make $100k, and have to pay 35% of that to the gov. Wrong. You always only made $65k. There are studies that show wages have always tracked with taxes…

What? Google and Apple are giving them devs access to something they built. That is not a tax. “Taxation is theft” is a very simple concept. If I don’t pay my taxes, people with guns come to my house, even if I don’t use public services. If you don’t want to pay Apple or Google, go develop for other devices.

Everyone uses public services, even if they don't ever interact with them directly. For example, it's the Government which decides whether it's you or someone else that owns your land.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#538

Post by awillen »

cletus wrote: post #495
Closi wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Paying lower unit price for higher volume customers is literally how the entire economy works. That's not how the economy works - it's a very simplified view which IMO is incorrect in this instance. Companies in theory only offer volume discounts when it makes commercial sense to do (i.e. 'second degree price discrimination'). Price discrimination opportunities happen when you believe that you will sell more to a c…

I'm sorry to say this but your comment reads like some core concepts from Econ 101 were absorbed but the part about how economics theory is largely descriptive not prescriptive was missed. You're not far into your comment before having the "in theory" qualifier. There are lots of reasons why volume discounts exist: - To encourage more use; - It's aspirational in that users believe they can get big enough to get that…

You're literally giving examples of how his premise applies in real life.

"Companies in theory only offer volume discounts when it makes commercial sense to do" - Encouraging more use makes commercial sense because it yields more money overall even with the discount (if done correctly) - Users aspiring to buy more makes commercial sense because people buying more means more money - It makes commercial sense to give discounts because large customers cost less relative to small ones due to fixed costs not changing based on customer size

...and so forth. You're saying his premise is irrelevant but giving a series of examples of why his premise is relevant.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#539

Post by simondotau »

malandrew wrote: post #341
the_solenoid wrote: post #331

All of these policies coming about are for the benefit of already monied interests and do not help small devs, or consumers. I also take huge umbrage that the framing of this is just as horrible as the framing of paying taxes in the US. People think, wrongly, that they make $100k, and have to pay 35% of that to the gov. Wrong. You always only made $65k. There are studies that show wages have always tracked with taxes…

> Taxes are the % of your "output" used to keep the commons going. The commons includes bombing other countries and waging unwinnable wars? I have no problem paying taxes if they were actually used for the commons, but only a fraction are used for the commons. Far too much is going to benefit special interest groups such as defense contractors, public sector employee benefits and pensions that are far above what priv…

Move to a better country.

Re: Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

#540

Post by Aldo_MX »

eropple wrote: post #338
jclardy wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly it, so many users are afraid that this will mean every random app you download will have a credit card entry field. Nope. Those random apps will still benefit from the simplicity of the system IAP, one tap, auth, done. The ones asking for a credit card will drop in ratings and search results. The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitor…

It's more than just one-time IAP, though. I'm generally "whatever" on what payment processor people use, but one of the things that does concern me is subscription management. To me there is a lot of value to having a central place where all my subscriptions are and where they can be canceled easily, even if I don't have the app installed anymore. YOLOing something with Stripe doesn't give me that without a bunch of…

so as an end user I have to pay 30% more because YOU want that convenience?

sorry, but you should be the one paying for that convenience.

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