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Apple Asks Court to Pause App Store Fee Fight While It Petitions Supreme Court in Epic Games Case

Ethosik said:
Not sure I get what you are trying to say. Are you suggesting we should implement a law that is specific to ONLY Apple? Is 30% legal or not?
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No, it was originally a response to saying the Supreme Court should rule for Apple because other companies also do 30%.

My point was that what other companies isn't relevant to this filing with the Supreme Court.
 
WarmWinterHat said:
The real point is that the law doesn't care what other companies are doing.
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I’m no lawyer - but I’m sure that precedents do matter and that arguments made about principals like Epic / Sweeney claim to care about as their motivation here are relevant in arguments made by both sides
 
gimarbazat said:
Courts should crack down on apples extortion fees of 30% period.
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Extortion? Apple offers access to a large ad lucrative user base for $99 and 30% commission (15% for small developers) while handling most of the back office type stuff and reducing friction in payment. Apple's problem is it made things look easy for developers and created a lucrative market, and now some developers want more of the pie while having Apple provide the same access to the market.

As Apple is forced to open up access to third party stores it will be interesting to see how things play out. I doubt small developers will fid a better deal overall, and big developers will still want to have access to Apple's customer base directly since replicating it and charging less to get developers on their platform will be a challenge. Once third party app stores are available, Apple should be free to charge what they want and chose who can be on the store, just like third party apps.

I suspect small developers will be the ultimate losers if Apple decides to change the pricing structure to add more up front or ongoing costs. Right now, for $99 a developer gets access to the market with no more downside risk of spending money before they make a sale; changes to the model could wind up making developers pay ongoing fees before they make a sale, putting them deeper in th hole and if they don't sell enough wind up losing money and going out of business.
 
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rp2011 said:
lol. Android is bigger than ios. And Apple has never been the Microsoft or Intel in terms of Monopoly. There are options.
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Yet they hold an extremely substantial proportion of the mobile phone and tablet market.

And you can side load on android- thus making your comment irrelevant and redundant to my argument
 
digitalrampage said:
I’d love to better understand how the world changed. Microsoft was successfully sued for antitrust for bundling Internet Explorer into their operating systems because of their market power.

Now you have this setup where you have no competition, where a company is making more margin selling other people’s products than they would get traditionally in a Big box outlet, and then wanting a cut of all future add-ons the same.

Love the security and safety, hate the fact their selected margins are significantly higher for them than they’ll allow anyone else.
Its no longer a method of distribution, it’s Software pimping.
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I am confused with your second paragraph.

How is Apple making more margin than back in the old Big Box days.

Devs used to be lucky to get 30% of the value back in the day. $100 software: 30-40 for the box store if not more. The manufacturer/publisher (company who copied and packaged the software to distribute) would have taken their cut (30-40ish), plus who ever else had a hand in the cookie jar. Leaving the company/dec getting 15-30%. Apple copied, the other digital stores at the time (Steam, Sony etc) which was a 70/30 split. 70% for the devs. Which is the total opposite of the Big Box days.

P.s. brick and mortar have margins that range from like 10/15 up to 1000s depending on what the item is, but most generally the margin mark up is 30-40% range.
I have worked retail for the majority of my adult life. Brick and Mortar/ Big Box ether make their money on high margins or high volume. Furniture stores have extremely high margins - how often do people buy new couches etc. While companies like Aldi, Costco and Sam’s Club run on value sells.
Amazon, if you have them handle your product distribution, takes like 60% of the sell price.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
None of that has anything to do with the merits of a legal case.
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Epic’s case should have been thrown out of every court of law, for the simple fact that they willingly violated their legal contract.

Then, if a government agency, had felt compelled to review Apple’s App Store contract, they could have reviewed the contract and worked with Apple to change any parts of the contract that violate the legal law, if there where any.
 
digitalrampage said:
Yet they hold an extremely substantial proportion of the mobile phone and tablet market.
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“Substantial proportion” does not equal monopoly, and the judge ruled in this very case that Apple does not have a monopoly. So to answer the question in your first post, Windows was a monopoly (with over 90% market share), iOS is not.

digitalrampage said:
And you can side load on android- thus making your comment irrelevant and redundant to my argument
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“The competition allows what Apple doesn’t” isn’t a strong point in favor of your “Why isn’t Apple regulated like a monopoly” argument

digitalrampage said:
Except right now all developers are getting 100% instead of 70 or 67%? Sounds like they’ve done good for others
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No, all developers have the option to add a link to their website in their app that kicks users out to a website to process payments. Those who don’t (or for developers who do and users choose to go through Apple anyway) have the same 15/30% cut.

If users take advantage of the link, then developers have to pay their own payment processor, handle their own sales taxes etc, which will take a percentage of their earnings.

Epic is apparently losing money at their 12% commission rate, which suggests that the 15% that 95% of developers pay is extremely reasonable; I’d argue it’s a good deal.

Edit: Edited to clarify developers pay the payment processor, not users - the way I had originally written it was unclear.
 
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surferfb said:
“Substantial proportion” does not equal monopoly, and the judge ruled in this very case that Apple does not have a monopoly. So to answer the question in your first post, Windows was a monopoly (with over 90% market share), iOS is not.


“The competition allows what Apple doesn’t” isn’t a strong point in favor of your “Why isn’t Apple regulated like a monopoly” argument


No, all developers have the option to add a link to their website in their app that kicks users out to a website to process payments. Those who don’t (or for developers who do and users choose to go through Apple anyway) have the same 15/30% cut.

If users take advantage of the link, then they have to pay their own payment processor, handle their own sales taxes etc, which will take a percentage of their earnings.

Epic is apparently losing money at their 12% commission rate, which suggests that the 15% that 95% of developers pay is extremely reasonable; I’d argue it’s a good deal.
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AFAIK,

Epic is bleeding money at 12%, not because of the fee but because of all the free game they keep giving out trying to build their platform, while not growing their user base fast enough because of lack of services.

Yet!, when/if the Epic game store had the foot traffic of Steam the 12% would probably work. Lack of foot traffic because EGS has more sucking power then the vacuum of space, leads to lose of money.

Amazon lost billions for the first nine (?) years, but look where they are today. Then again, they offer a lot more service for the consumer’s bang.

Edit: I have come to loath anything to deal with Tim Epic, because of his childish behavior and self entitlement.
 
The_Gream said:
Amazon lost billions for the first nine (?) years, but look where they are today. Then again, they offer a lot more service for the consumer’s bang.
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Is Amazon, the seller of things, actually making money now or is it still actually AWS and the selling stuff just tags along?
 
Happy_John said:
And that’s your choice. Giving the user the agency to make that choice for themselves is good.

There are annoyances with third party payment methods - for me mainly that, while purchases and subscriptions through Apple can be shared to family members, this is not necessarily the case with purchases in apps themselves, and not through Apple.

But that should be my choice. Apple should not remove that choice for me.
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But the App is not giving me a choice. If I buy an App on the AppStore, then it has in-app-purchases, that are not AppStore, then I am now forced to use their system, if I want to keep and use the app I've already paid for, or give up on the app. This is rare, as most apps are now free with in-app-purchases only.

If it was always a choice then I would ok with it, but apps are removing my choice. It's not Apple removing the choice.
 
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Still not sure why Fortnite isn't on the Mac anymore. I only started playing it in 2019 when it was on the front of the App Store but as a non console owner or PC gamer, they would have had zero chance of me ever taking an interest otherwise. I later put it on my Mac then in August 2020 it was pulled from the iOS store and neglected on the Mac for months.

As far as I know, nobody forced them to take it off the Mac - all stubbornness on the part of Epic. For a while I paid for GeForce now to play it with my nephew at the time but just another expense I didn't need every month.

Regardless of the whataboutism, for them to say 30% is a problem with Apple and Google but not Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo does expose them in the court of public opinion as being full of S. Either it's a problem to take too much from creators / developers, or it's not. Furthermore, I don't think any of those console platforms are very open, or supporting of third party payment gateways whatsoever..

This should be shoved in Sweeney's face until he's big enough and bold enough to actually stake his company's weight into his 'strong beliefs' like he was against Apple / Google. Or until he has a credible explanation for why it's permissible for the dominant gaming companies to do the same stuff. 30% commission on the console stores. Why is that okay Sweeney?
 
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Naraxus said:
Epic needs to be stomped into the gound once and for all. Epic has done nothing good for anyone but their own pockets
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Epic let go 1,000 people because Fortnite is starting to fail. They are not the good guys everyone on this site claims. Tom Sweeney said the industry should thank Epic for giving businesses 1,000 high quality resumes. Such a horrible person.
 
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