Apple seems to be okay with not taking anything beyond the $99/year developer fee from Amazon, Bank of America, Coinbase, etc. while still providing them with hosting and whatever services come with it.
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Apple Accused of Not Doing Enough to Comply With South Korean App Store Law
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And the developer would likely get way less sales on an external website compared to hosting the app on the App Store. The end result is that 100% is way less than 70% or 85% of App Store revenue.
That’s what I find many analysis don’t factor in - the role the App Store plays in discovery and driving sales to developers and growing the overall pie. There’s value in that, even if we can’t agree how to quantify this amount, I think we can agree that Apple deserves something.
They're selling tons of iPhones for hundreds of dollars each every year, raking in billions of dollars in revenue and profit. Would they sell all those iPhones if users were unable to expand/customise their phones functionality through downloading 3rd party apps? Hardly.
So yes, seems to work quite well with their overall business plan.
EDIT: And I'm sure that's one of the main reasons why they made their app hosting free (as in not charging variable fees, such as per-download fees/commissions) in the first place: To promote their iOS platforms and sales of their iOS devices.
It's not as if Apple got nothing in return for providing free app downloads for consumers (and developers).
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On the flip side, it could be good for Samsung.(apple pulling out of South Korea)
Maybe don't quote out of context?
"By enrolling in the Apple Developer Program, individuals and organizations receive everything they need to develop apps for distribution."
The fee is a membership fee for Apple Developer Program which gives them "everything they need to develop apps for distribution" as long as they don't want to charge users directly through the app.
Apple is following the laws in both South Korea and China. It's just that it's much harder to fight the government in China than South Korea.
I bet you the Chinese don't need to wait for some vague law being passed.
It's just a government entity dictating what Apple needs to do to comply.
IAP certainly was innovation for Apple.
They took something that existed outside mobile, made some small changes to implement it in their ecosystem, and achieved great economic success.
Almost a text book example of innovation.
No one would have done more than grumble into their cornflakes at 5% commission. Most companies do not have a 30% profit margin as it is, so to whack on a 30% commission on gross sales was simply asking for trouble. Reducing it to 15% wasn't enough either. Imagine if credit card companies wanted a 30% commission on gross sales paid through their card! Their 1-5% commission is already a license to print money. Apple would still do stonkingly well w 5%.
PS - and if you want proposed solutions, it's quite simply to allow sideloading and competing app stores. Then you will find out what developers would actually be willing to pay to sell through the Apple name. Keep in mind that this is already what happens in macOS, and many (or most?) companies choose to pay 0% commission, and simply sell their apps via their own websites, and sideload.
And before you throw around the security excuse, again, macOS has sideloading, and there are no security issues. Do you think people are too scared to download a DaVinci Resolve installer direct from BlackMagic? Do you really think there is a security issue there? No, exactly. And thus why BlackMagic have zero desire to give Apple 30% of its revenues from thousands of hours of dev for the "privilege" of selling through the Apple store.
And yeah, I know, the next argument is, but Apple put all this work into creating macOS, how do they get their rewards for that. If companies like BlackMagic didn't write their software for macOS, then Macs would be completely useless. It's a two way street. Apple needs the developers, and the developers need the platforms. Apple provides macOS, and sells the hardware. The developers sell the software. Apple are just being greedy wanting 30% of gross dev sales too. Not even 30% of profits, but 30% of gross sales. Its just insanely greedy, and thus attracted all this heat.
And yep, I know all the other platforms charge the same commissions. Once Apple falls, the others will all fall too. But first you have to take down the big fish.
And btw, this proposal I've outlined isn't something new, it's been out there since day one. Regardless, the courts around the world are deciding, and it doesn't matter what two randoms on the internet say to each other.
Ok, when flipped, it’s nonsense. Oh boohoo for the trillion dollar company, how will they ever continue to release marginal updates for their products??
The burden is on the prosecutor to prove Apple is violating the law. Meanwhile, Apple is innocent until proven guilty.
The concept of not "doing enough" to comply with the law is nonsense. If a law is so vague you can't even tell if it's being followed, it belongs in the garbage.
The concept of not "doing enough" to comply with the law is nonsense. If a law is so vague you can't even tell if it's being followed, it belongs in the garbage.
Until you reach a point where your website goes down due to high traffic since it is not scalable. Or you get a sudden spike of traffic to your downloads and go over your monthly bandwidth limit. Or people start contacting you more about billing issues so you need to hire someone to take all their calls.
Apple has had history of not complying with ruling, rules, regulations, whatever you wanna call it. They bullied telecom companies into paying all of Apple’s marketing expenses, which led to Apple getting quite hefty fine from Korean FTC, which was subsequently reduced with promise by Apple that they won’t do it again. After this got settled, they are now bullying telecom companies again.
Narrative that Apple and others (such as Netflix, especially) are evil? Their way of doing business is INDEED vile. Comply with laws, and try to do what is reasonable to proactively comply with laws. That is not that difficult.
It's easy to charge less, when you are also doing less for the money.
Credit card companies do not have the deal with the costs of operating an App Store, and they have not gone through the effort of aggregating the best customers in the world and building up a user base that developers can market to.
The App Store has made it convenient for users to purchase and download apps, which in turn leads to more apps being purchased. Its value is in growing the overall pie, and if Apple is able to enable a developer to sell many more copies of an app than he otherwise would have via an external website, sounds about right to claim a commission for its role in facilitating more sales.
If a credit card could promise to grow my sales, and if 70% of a lot of copies of an app sold is more than 100% of only a few copies (bearing in mind that many apps do not have marginal costs), I wouldn't mind paying the credit card 30%, so long as it means that I still end up taking more home at the end of the day. It's absolute total revenue that counts at the end of the day, not average revenue per app.
I don’t blame apple for dragging their feet, if that is what they are in fact doing. Big companies with big dollars are demanding, not vile. We’ll see where this goes
I've had paid apps in the Windows Phone app store, and I was actually in the top 30 list at one point, so it wasn't like no one was using it.
Support was negligible. Like seriously, if I got one email a week it was busy. Unless you royally mess up something, whether it comes from the app store or your personal site doesn't matter.
And even if your app is for sale in an app store, if it's big enough, you still need a dedicated team to handle support. The app I work on now, has that.
I get what you're saying, but something like auto-scaling is in no way worth Apple's 30% cut.
Selling multiple licenses each at far above the cost to develop the software and services provided is morally wrong to me, yes.
If Microsoft sold Windows for a billion dollars per license (or however much they spent to develop Windows 10, if you could even get a true total cost), yeah, that's a bit too much for me.
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Yes! I actually agree with this. The problem is that I don't believe that Apple should force everyone into their app store, or if they "need" to, they shouldn't force everyone to use their payment processor with its 30% cut.
Seriously, all Apple needs to do is to cut their percentage to 10% or 15% and I think everyone would be way way happier. Instead they're fighting tooth and nail to prevent any changes at all.
It’s apples IP and completely opt in for both consumers and developers. There is no coercion. I’d like all companies to lower their markups, especially the oil companies….and can’t blame apple for fighting tooth and nail.
The difference between greed and good business sense is that when you make the money, its greedy, when I make it, its just good business.