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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

#581

Post by simondotau »

karatinversion wrote: post #578
simondotau wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the point is that you might have a viable business at a price point of $7 that you won’t have at $10 (with the extra $3 all going to Apple).

This business also wouldn't be viable if Apple and Google had never opened their platforms to external developers in the first place. Or if they never existed and everyone still had really advanced Nokia phones with T9 and SMS.

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if iOS and Android were Windows-esque free-for-alls with rampant spyware and malware, making a good portion of their potential user base wary of installing apps.

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if people haven't become accustomed to spending money in App stores without worrying about credit card fraud, etc.

Or perhaps their business wouldn't be viable if iOS and Android had no mechanisms to protect against app piracy, and 30% of their potential customers pirated the app.

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

#582

Post by simondotau »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #559
simondotau wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be making a weird argument. Obviously Apple isn't allowed to sell a smartphone that contains a large chunk of plutonium, or that is fake and doesn't actually contain any electronics. There are limits to what corporations can do. But they are free to choose the price. They can sell the next iPhone for $10,000 if they really wanted. Perfectly legal. They are free to choose under which terms they license the…

No no no no. I'm making the argument that if the people of Ohgodplsnoistan pass a law that forbids Apple to sell their phone for anything above $200, that is legal. And that Apple can either cry and sell to my population of two people, or exit this market. In the same way, the government of Plsnoistan decides what is a legal license and what is not. Hell, I can pass a law that requires Apple to give out a free cookie…

I think we agree? I'm confused. Here's what I wrote a few posts up, I'm not sure how this disagrees with what you said just now:

> > > Are you suggesting that regulators can force Apple to give away their stuff for free if they want to participate in that market?

It seems your answer is yes.

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

#583

Post by yarcob »

mschuster91 wrote: post #407
giobox wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is still value in the comparison, but you are absolutely correct. Any comparison must include this huge caveat - the Mac had a third party software ecosystem for over 20 years, well before OS X or a Mac App Store came along. There simply was far, far less historical incentive to adopt the macOS App Store than there was on iOS, which of course mandated the App Store from the beginning. As a thought exper…

On the other side, as a customer I'm not exactly happy with the prior ecosystem either: - every app has their own licensing system - I have to keep track of emails, license key files, logins and other bullshit manually instead of having it synchronized automatically at application install. Not to mention I have a boatload of shop accounts that have collected my payment and other personal data (e.g. postal address) an…

It would be nice if the Mac App Store fixed all these things, but eg. refunds are a mess on the App Store. Officially there are no refunds at all, in practice it kinda depends on the support agent, and sometimes developers are mysteriously hit with refunds after years... It's a mess for both consumers and devs.

At the same time, MAS is not suitable for many business customers. Eg. some companies buy software exclusively through resellers -- not possible on the Mac App Store. So you need to sell licenses outside the store as well, at which point you may ask yourself: Why bother with the app store?

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

#584

Post by commoner »

xondono wrote: post #451
gigel82 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this limiting anything? I see this as adding options, and I'd like to see it adopted across the world.

It’s adding options to developers, not necessarily to users. The Apple and Google payment systems were in effect a market driven standards, now we’ll have a soup of systems on a race to the bottom on a very sensitive part of the ecosystem.

Apple and Google have a duopoly (an inefficient market) on mobile platforms, which is how they were able to enforce anti-competitive restrictions to sustain their 30% fee for so long.

This new law opens up the mobile payment processing market to more competitors, which will drive prices downward to benefit users, developers, and competitors at the expense of Apple and Google.

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

#585

Post by stale2002 »

kryptozinc wrote: post #475
grishka wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This would entrench their monopolies even further. It should be legally required that any device that is marketed as a general-purpose computer, whether pocketable or not, and is shipped in a locked state, is fully unlockable by the end user. Without a single network packet sent to manufacturer's servers. That's the only way we as a society could fix this dire situation. In other words, if I buy a phone from Appl…

Sure, though they may chose to wipe iOS from your device if you unlock it. Then you are free to build your own os and execute root level code if you wish.

Actually, no. The other option is that the court forces Apple to not do that, and fines them billions of dollars if they refuse.

South Korea is already doing significant laws that are at least related to this conversation.

I expect more countries to pass similar laws soon.

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

#586

Post by nicoburns »

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…

It seems to me that you're thinking of "market abuse" in terms of intent. But it's not really about, it's about what the practical impact is. The test is "is this significantly impacting users in a negative way". If that sounds like a subjective judgement call, then that's because it is. Anti-competition laws are basically an escape hatch that allow governments to intervene at their discretion when markets fail.

So to answer your question: it potentially crosses over into abusive as soon as you are restricting customers from doing anything. And it gets less likely that you'll get away with it the more dominant your market position (as a scale), and the greater the importance of your product or service to society (which is why game console currently get away with these practices but utilities don't).

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

#587

Post by misnome »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #180
pcr910303 wrote: post #103

It’s not usual for news on my country to be on top of HN. Very unexpected. I’m guessing though that the South Korean market is be significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day. I guess this is, in some kind, a victory against the huge companies. But… personally I do find sad that this would be detrimental to South Korean app UX. Stripe isn’t a thing here…

"significant enough for Apple and Google to not just pull out it’s business from South Korea and call it a day." I always found this line of argument disingenious and disturbing. Disingenious because it doesn't happen historically, so it sounds like a tired threat Disturbing - are we saying we would rather kneecap our democratic institutions, right or wrong, than live without iPhones? We'd die to defend our lands and…

> Disingenious because it doesn't happen historically, so it sounds like a tired threat

Hasn't this happened several times with Google-news?

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

#588

Post by collaborative »

bloppe wrote: post #411

This is going in the wrong direction. Government shouldn't be imposing regulations on monopolistic app stores when competition can naturally break the monopolies and bring them in line with developer and consumer needs. Let there be multiple app stores, charging developers competitive fees and implementing competitive security and convenience features. Don't let the platform favor any particular app store, or raise b…

While different App Stores is preferable, this actually is a big improvement for users and developers alike

Many users simply don't want to share their payment details with App Stores because they don't like "one payment serves all" setups. They want to be asked each time for their payment details because they feel that gives them control

Likewise, many users already have payment arrangements with providers like Paypal that they trust, and don't want to add one more trusted payment provider to their list

As a developer, I want to offer all options to users - App Store payment, Paypal, CC, and anything else

So I like where this law is going, and I have no doubt it increases the chances of other legislations imposing further "restrictions on what is not allowed" on mobile devices

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

#590

Post by throwaways885 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #569
vlovich123 wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you run 1p and 3p code in the same environment? That’s frequently the challenge mobile operators run into - the OS needs privileged access to location services (eg 911) that it can’t grant untrusted code.

> That’s frequently the challenge mobile operators run into - the OS needs privileged access to location services (eg 911) that it can’t grant untrusted code. It doesn't actually need this. The phone app can just ask for permission to access your location, which you would then give it when you call 911 because you want the emergency responders to know where you are. Anyone who really wants to can already deny the pho…

Calling 911 is one of those times when I really, really don't want to see permission popups. If I'm in a car crash, I ain't going to be lucid enough to make sure the permissions are set properly. I am almost certain there are legal restrictions in this direction.
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