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Apple Hit With Multibillion-Euro Lawsuit for 'Overcharging' App Store Users
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oh boy
lemme break it down for ya
lets say you buy 10 eur app
gov't taxes VAT upfront - varies by state, lets assume 20% - you got 8 eur
then app store charges 30% - you got 5,6 eur
from that you need to pay you developers, hardware (yeah, apple ones of coure, they are cheap AF), legal, emplyee benefits/insurance, and son on. lets assume you make net 40% from that - that leaves you with 2,24 eur net profit - and you need to pay income tax on this - lets assume 20% - 1,8 EUR actual money.
with 15% app store tax net profix would be up to 2,72 - or +0,48 EUR. and i'm pretty sure theres no 9,5 eur tier available for app store so if they lower to 9 EUR they are losing money on that deal.
so no, nobody is giving better prices after apple graciously gave them 15%. indies are making scraps anyway after everyone big enough to enforce their law (gov't, apple) has taken their cut.
The difference is that you don’t have to use one specific supermarket to get identical services. If this condition is violated, like Walmart in Germany did, they will get their asses kicked as well.
That's probably the worst analogy I've seen on MacRumors.
Lets make it a bit more realistic. If I walk into McDonalds and I see a burger I want for £4.99 I am either happy to pay the price and enjoy my burger or I walk away and find an alternative that fits my budget.
I guess Nintendo, Playstation, Steam, and Xbox also overcharge their customers with the 30% commission?
Utilities are a necessity apps are not haha
apologists are wrong. it's not about being happy, it's not about needs. it's about making a compromise. the current compromise is not THAT bad but definitely is not good. it will be interesting to see where it will go. I hope Apple can retain their own App Store but there will be options where 'anybody' could make their own (edit: infrastructures and everything so like if there was an ExternalStore API and all the other is yours to develop.. so no Apple servers etc!) but taking Apple's hard work into account somehow. like 5% of fee goes for Apple still. FYI I would use the Apple Store, definitely. but what's your problem with choices?
30% is normal margins for any retailer selling things. Y’all would be horrified of draft beer margins!!
No, imagine you have a electric toothbrush, and the brush head is proprietary, you have to spend $50+ for a new brush made by anyone, and Apple is the only place to get it. Apple takes $30 off a brush purchase regardless of who made the brush.
You can get a different electric toothbrush, but you can’t find one that you like more than this one.
This is called vertical integration, and this is where the regulators step in to mitigate market power imbalances.
The point is, with iOS apps on iOS devices, there are no alternative distribution channels, thus Apple can charge whatever they want because there is no competition in that specific market segment.
I’m not forced. I choose to buy into apples ecosystem.
In the United States? No. Even if it was a utility, it's not a valid comparison. Utilities cover essential services (which internet access generally is). Paid apps on an iPhone or Android device are not essential services. Now a smartphone might be an essential service but which paid app do people have to use to survive anywhere in the world?
Dating apps provide convenience and entertainment. Games provide entertainment and maybe some learning. Work-related apps are specific to someone's job. If they are necessary for that, the company or organization should cover the cost.
So lets say Apple's cut is zero.
Who pays for the colossal resources needed to run the App Store & its backend services, infrastructure etc? Lets not forget the systems needed to pay developers for their work that they now want hosted & distributed for nothing?
What app or functionality is Apple’s exclusive? What I cannot do on an Android phone that can only be done on an Apple device?
The choice is there.
Mercedes Benz offers an all-display dashboard in some cars. We can sue them for the price “overcharge” in this model? Since no other car offers the same functionality and I have no choice but to buy a Mercedes…
Also, for the happy developers over here: sorry to break down the dream. The only thing that you will accomplish with sideloading is piracy. So the very modest income gain that you would have will be complete diluted with the ramping piracy.
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Apple is perfectly fine to change whatever they want. It is Apple's Business, Apple's Devices and Apple's App Store.
Join the majority on Macrumors and ask Apple to pull out of the pathetic little country called Netherland. Show them who is the boss!
Although I am not in the majority , I would be glad if MacRumors unite together to fight this.
Join the majority on Macrumors and ask Apple to pull out of the pathetic little country called Netherland. Show them who is the boss!
Although I am not in the majority , I would be glad if MacRumors unite together to fight this.
1. Create something of your own
2. People choose to buy it and it becomes successful
3. It gets taken away from you
Um.. so how is that a "free market"? I think these people need a dictionary.
2. People choose to buy it and it becomes successful
3. It gets taken away from you
Um.. so how is that a "free market"? I think these people need a dictionary.
Regular App user in the Netherlands here… when did I overpay for apps? Before the App store software would cost €29 for a simple utility app, up to hundreds of euros for things like Photoshop. Now I buy a lifetime version of Affinity for less then €50…
Pfff
Pfff
In my area, as I assume is the same with most others, I have literally one power and gas utility to choose from. Unless I want to go off grid and produce my own power, I don’t have another choice. I do, however, have the choice of at least two different major mobile ecosystems to choose from, one of which I can side load apps if I want to. Furthermore, it’s a choice for me to use a smartphone and the ecosystem within it.
If I am asked to pay for an app that is merely a convenience or entertainment for me, that’s fine... but most of the apps I use are free, and the ones I do pay for provide personally essential services, and I choose to pay those prices for convenience.
It’s less of a choice for me to utilize the one utility available to me to provide electricity and gas to my home. Sure, I could live off the grid, but that’s a level of knowledge and living I’m not suited for.
We’re comparing Apple(s) and oranges in this situation
…
Why the software developers are always complaining about the income after the Apple cut?
Is not like any other business that pay VAT, income taxes, shipping, distribution costs, etc?
Why your industry is so special? Long gone are the days that you had to charge 0.99 to survive in the App Store.
Raise your prices! If the product is good you will survive like any other business.
If the ONLY cure is $2Mil, of course. However, Apple’s ecosystem isn’t the only ecosystem out there, nor is the situation nearly the same. One preserves life, one makes it more convenient.
Capitalism has as one of its central characteristics the existence of a competition-driven market and all capitalist systems invariably have anti-trust authorities which oversee the market and can intervene to ensure competition is preserved.
The argument is more whether the authorities in the Netherlands are overreaching, but that private companies are subject to regulation is nothing new and nothing contrary to a capitalist system: it's actually a required characteristic of capitalism in general.
UGH. The issue is about how the retail model is setup. Most stores use a retail model where a supplier sells to a retailer and the the retailer chooses the price that the product is sold. The Apple App Store uses a consignment model where the supplier chooses the price that the product is sold and the retailer gets a fixed % of that price. The consigment model has made it easy for any developer to create a product to sell without needing to go through a retailer that chooses whether the product is worth selling. (The current review process is not examining product marketability.) As I have argued elsewhere, Apple can just flip their model and likely dodge these issues. However, there will be LOTS of developers that will no longer have any place to sell their work. The people that win in these lawsuits are the established players, not the high school student that is trying to start a business.
I think that this case is stupid and empty, but it has nothing to do with communism.
Try retail fashion. 80-90% on some brands.
Regulators and complainants here are like my friend Tony. The moment you’ve got a £20 note in your pocket he can smell it and will try and obtain it. This is mostly because it’s an injustice that I earned it and he didn’t. Rather than build a viable competing income source some people think success is merely a justification to redistribute funds or regulate the income.
Instead of regulating this, perhaps European companies should have stopped messing around back in the day and built a viable alternative. But no, they didn’t. Where where you Nokia, Ericsson? Oh wait you were selling out while Symbian was burning, much like your big brother mega corporation Philips did in the 90s and 00s. Where were the European regulators then?
So what we have here is someone regulating away because they took the road to the bottom rather than the road to the top and are pissy that they cut themselves out of the market controls in the process.
Of course lots of old men in Europe got to retire with nice things. And that’s the reality.
This isn’t about the App Store or cuts, it’s about control and manipulation after the same people sold out already.
(ex Philips employee for ref)
Why do you think you’re entitled to having affordable heads for the toothbrush you like the best? You can always get a different brush with cheaper heads.
Maybe the reason you like that toothbrush is because they can only afford developing it by selling heads at a markup.