EU says Apple’s App Store breaks competition rules after Spotify complaint
Apple has "abused its dominant position" in the distribution of music streaming apps, the European Commission said.
I am pretty sure I can find more.
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Apple Protests Call for Third-Party App Stores and Lower Platform Fees in Japan
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I am pretty sure I can find more.
Clearly those are things that will be hit or miss depending on the store and developer. A Google Stadia or Xbox Cloud store will likely be high price, quality, selection, and satisfaction. A no-name ill-run store will likely be low price, quality, selection, and satisfaction. This is no different than the iOS App Store. Some real garbage on there. There's no one-size-fits-all here. Even were some government report to be issued saying that on average third-party stores would be of low-quality, that is no reason to impede the creation of the high-quality ones that will no doubt exist.
Compile an open source game and throw it on a disk and pop it in your console. Hmmmm.
Hundred of stores? For the last 30 years?
Are you talking different physical stores? Like Babbage’s and GameStop? Best Buy? Wal-mart? If so, then that’s great, but we live in the year 2022 and I’m pretty sure Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft operate their own online stores for digital downloads of games that run on their respective platforms and that they take a 30% cut. Also, I’m pretty sure Nintendo took a 30% cut on cartridge games when a third party launched a game on a SNES console, back in the day. I’m also sure Nintendo takes a 30% cut of those cute little packages they sell at the wal-mart and Best Buy now. But sure, FREEDOM OF CHOICE! SMH.
Most of the zealots demanding a “free and open” platform from Apple here are doing so to stick it to Apple because Tim Cook is “greedy”, not because they actually want to sideload apps.
I’m perfectly happy with my sandboxed iPhone and iPad and after it gets wrecked by this sideloading crap the advocates around are going to disappear back into the woodwork or claim that they weren’t really for it. I won’t forget who they are and they’ll get verbally bludgeoned every chance I get.
Again, people like that around here don’t understand unintended consequences, but I guess we’ll all find out together.
Well, they were proactive. Except that they were proactively trying to fight this change politically instead of adapting their systems and policies as they should have.
Continuing to fight this will prove to be a very expensive lesson for both Apple and Google. And rightly so.
Android doesn't have better prices, quality, selection or satisfaction for apps than iOS.
Do Sams/Walmart prevent their customers from shopping at competing retailers?
Apple still gets paid for the platform they created. People still pay thousands of dollars for iOS. And Apple would still get paid for apps purchased on their store. They just wouldn't be paid for apps sold on other stores (you know, that part of the platform Apple didn't create, but still expects to get paid for, for some reason).
I'm not talking about conjectural comparisons to stores that might exist in the future. I'm talking about comparing the stores that exist right now. Can any governments make a strong case that the App Store has worse prices, quality, selection and satisfaction than an OS with 3rd party stores? They're not even trying to do it which is a serious short-coming to the claims of lack of competition on iOS.
Because that's the price to pay to reach iOS users. If it's not a viable business they can shut down and give the money back to their shareholders.
Sony gets paid for games sold at Walmart, they didn't create Walmart but still expect to get paid for any game that runs on the Playstation, because Playstation is the platform they created. Apple created the iOS platform, and expects to get paid for App that runs on that platform, that's how and why they created the platform.
I consider all consoles as general purpose computing devices. There is very little fixed with them.
But where did the stranger get the game from? The first sale will probably be were Sony got their 30%.
@gnipgnop @DeepIn2U
A question came up in another thread about gaming consoles and sideloading.
I have Android, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, Linux, MacOS, PS4, and an XBox.
For all of these, only iOS and iPadOS I cannot sideload on.
For all of these, only iOS and iPadOS I cannot purchase from someplace other than the single OEM specific store.
That said, this "legislation" applies equally to Google also. I suspect for Japan it is more about preinstalled and removable software.
MHO YOMV
Fair enough - they should go after Sony as well, and they likely will at some point.
And yet, those developers should be allowed to use Apple's APIs and operating system calls for free?
I consider my kitchen blender a socket wrench. Doesn't make it so.
No. Those developers should pay for the development kits used to write to those APIs and system calls, just the same as if they were building apps for other operating systems.
Oh wait - they already do.
Well, a third party app store or payment method would likely facilitate the latter, but the former, if that's what you want, enjoy paying 100€ per year.
Even subscription prices for things like Disney+ account the Apple tax in their pricing models knowing a large percentage of people will sign up through the App Store and kill their margins. Apple inflicts pricing issues even outside the Apple Store that people also do not consider. Google too to a smaller extent.... but they allow alternate apps stores and side loading.
Price: Minecraft is $7 on both iOS and Android, though I'm not sure why we would expect to see a cheaper price on Android, since it has the same commission structure as iOS. The only relevant comparison here would be for apps that are available on iOS, Android, and as a third-party download for Android. Another data point, we did see Epic offer cheaper pricing for v-bucks when they briefly activated third-party payments. At worst this would appear be a wash, with price parity remaining, however there's evidence of potentially cheaper prices.
Quality: This will vary from developer to developer and really has nothing to do with method of distribution.
Selection: The iOS App Store has 2.2 millions apps and the Play Store has 3.5 million apps. That's 60% more apps and doesn't even include the one's distributed through a third-party.
Satisfaction: I couldn't find any data specifically related to app store satisfaction.
I don't see anything here that would cause a government pause at regulating Apple. It looks to potentially decrease costs and greatly expand app selection.