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Apple Approves Epic Games Store for iPhone and iPad in EU
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I think the concern is not the superficial appearance of the button, it’s what happens after you press that familiar looking button.
Press Apple’s “BUY” button and you and your credit card are subject to Apple‘s terms and conditions. Those T&C may not be perfect, but they’ve been around for ages and are well understood and benign.
Press Epic’s lookalike ”BUY” button and, well, nobody knows. Can you get a refund from Epic if your kid pressed the buy button by mistake? Will EPIC stored your card and personal details for unrelated purposes? Will they opt you in to a subscription/upsell because you didn’t read the fine print. Can they be trusted? What does their behavior so far say about them? Lots of unknowns.
Just as they can - and will - going forward. No change.
I certainly would agree with iOS being such a natural monopoly (or, with Android, a duopoly).
But not the App Store:
"A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors."
That's not true for application stores. Developing and operating an App Store is cheap (as evidenced by Riley Testut), and there's a low entry barrier. The technical building blocks, i.e. XCode and the certificate/signing infrastructure has been there all along.
That - the low entry barriers and capital required - is why Apple is fighting alternative app stores so hard. And why Apple tried to set up high "artificial" barriers setting up alternative stores, such as their requiring a "stand-by letter of credit for €1,000,000".
Again, for iOS itself, I'd certainly agree that it's a natural duopoly with Android.
...as long as you've never heard of the concept of logical inference.
Given how it's technically very similar to macOS - though with a review requirement imposed on top - it doesn't.
Bit rich, considering what you just dismissed as mere opinion and conjecture
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And thank f**k for that, we don’t have to worry about those 3rd party crap stores.
There is a change. Apple was forced to give an unscrupulous developer a certificate. That most certainly is a change.
Or within the universe of cell phones not so much.
According to your above definition seems like it is.
Sure the development costs have been spread over many years. But again that's neither here nor there. Apples costs are irrelevant to the service provided and the fee structure that Apple maintains. If you applied that rational to other industries a Ferrari would cost $50K.
Sure, it's easy after the initial development and IP have already been established. eg. producing a blue led today is easy, but to get there millions and millions of dollars were sunk into the development.
The app store is apples IP. The "artificial" barriers have nothing to do with this. It's still Apples IP.
Only if it's logical and we're not discussing math.
Different demographic.
What's rich is that it isn't recognized a series of objective facts can still lead to a subjective conclusion.Bit rich, considering what you just dismissed as mere opinion and conjecture
It’s no longer theirs when they sell it to me. Then it’s mine and any rights they may have or not have at that point become a matter of law. In the EU that law includes an ability to load an alternative App Store. If they don’t like it they have a choice not to sell their product to those in the EU. Again, they won’t put their money where their mouth is and go there.
No one, anywhere, has to worry about it, including the EU. If you don't want it, don't use it.
Simple.
Yes - Apple can't just deny access for being unwanted competition.
But if that developer violates the terms or the law, Apple can yank the certificate.
No. Apple (by their own choice) gives away the tools to create an application software store away for (almost) free. Well, you do have to pay the developer subscription.
The only high barriers to entry are Apple's approval process.
That's not "natural" in being a monopoly.
They are. But costs are relevant in determining if something is a "natural" monopoly or a not-so-natural one.
Technical know-how and costs.
Intellectual property may confer a legal "monopoly" on exploiting it - but that's not a natural monopoly (quite the opposite in this case).
Why? What's different about the demographic?
👉 I'm honestly curious to know.
If you want to get technical, Spotify used IAP from June 2014 thru May 2016. Apple Music launched on June 30th, 2015. So a total of two years where Spotify allowed IAP. And only one of those years involved Apple Music being available at the same time.
All the other years Spotify has been on the App Store = free ad-supported app available (no commission for Apple). Customers had to leave the App Store to get the more expensive paid subscription version of Spotify. That is in direct contradiction to the EU claiming anti-steering made it hard for customers to get access to cheaper versions of apps. The reality is that most companies (like Spotify, Netflix and Amazon) had customers go online in order to avoid Apple's commission NOT to give them a cheaper price.
Spotify was not wrong per growth. Their growth curve was much steeper than any other company offering music streaming. Globally, Apple Music is basically tied with Amazon and Tencent. YouTube is about 5% behind that. Music streaming total revenue went from $2.8 billion in 2015 to $17.5 billion in 2022. So the reality is that Apple Music launching in 2015 happened at a time when music streaming rapidly grew and ended up with Spotify having a dominant global position ten years later with several other services in a virtual dead heat behind them.
None of this factual information aligns with what Spotify or the EU have claimed per music streaming and Apple. But they went ahead and fined them $1.8 billion anyway.
Do you assume that Epic allows 3rd party sellers on the Epic Game Store, much less without taking a cut?
If you didn't want the iPhone and App Store you could buy an Android. Simple.
The problem is none of this has anything to do with consumers. Everything the EU is doing is to protect businesses who have learned how to manipulate the 'competition' laws to take advantage of them to line their own pockets.
Epic is doing this for one and only one reason- Tim Sweeney wants to make more money and keep all of it for himself, and he wants to do it on a platform someone else developed and do it for free. The consumers aren't going to benefit at all when services like Facebook remove their app from the Apple App Store and require you to get it directly from them whether you (the consumer) like it or not and then hoovers up every bit of data you have and more for their own advantage and there will be no protection for you the consumer. And when all of this starts to happen, the news headlines will be the same- Apple iPhone infected by massive malware- or similar. The company that created the issue will not be harmed but Apple's name will be splattered all over the walls with all the issues this mess will cause.
Violates the law is one thing, because that implies criminal prosecution. The developer did already violate the developer agreement, that's not unwanted competition. So right then and there that is change that allows developers who attempt to defraud apple have to be on the EU app store.
That subscription provides a myriad of services.
No, that's defrauding your supplier. That's not a high bar as you claim.
No, their costs are irrelevant. It's supply or demand pricing. You don't like the price don't opt-in.
If it was exploited, and keeps getting exploited - unlike the false claims of the (one) competitor.
Billions vs millions. That's not a demographic difference?
None of the data changes anything about that it's not a fair competition between them and Apple.
That said, I'd say the EU should look more into Spotify being a gatekeepers on music (for the music industry and artists) themselves.
So then why does the EU feel entitled to Apple's GLOBAL revenue if its laws are "for the markets in the EU"?
No, I want the iPhone. I want my hardware to belong to me and I, the owner of said hardware, to be able to install, uninstall, modify, use or change at my will, without anyone else's permission.
Telling someone to get another device is a cop out, and a lazy one at that.
You don't even need to side load on the iPhone to get scammed: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/26/apple-pay-hungary-issue/
There is a single year where Spotify could claim that it wasn't a fair competition: the year where Spotify allowed IAP that was subject to Apple's commission and Apple Music was also available.
However, when you look at Spotify's long history on the App Store (since 2008) it's obvious that Spotify didn't prefer to use IAP. They preferred to only offer the free ad-supported version within the App Store and have customers go online to subscribe to the more expensive premium version. There is zero evidence that business model harmed their growth. They've used it 13 out of the 15 years they've been on the App Store.
That argument falls apart when companies like Facebook pull their app out of the App Store and force you to get it directly from them only and they remove all the data protections the App Store requires. This whole thing has nothing to do with consumers, it;s all about making money by any means necessary without regard for consumers.
Force, huh?
I don't have Facebook or any Meta product installed on my phone. I don't think I've ever felt forced.
If said company doesn't use the app provider you want to use then make a choice. No one is forced to do anything.
Tell that to all the tens of millions of non tech-savvy users who will be caught up in the mess this creates. Just because you demand choice, doesn't give you the right to impose the consequences on others.