When you create a developer account you already pay the fee--$100 everyyear. The 30% fee is for transactions through the apple subscription service.
This is nothing more than Apple trying to transition to services like AWS, and charging per user.
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Apple Says Spotify Only Pays 15% Fee on About 0.5% of Subscribers in Response to App Store Complaint
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When you create a developer account you already pay the fee--$100 everyyear. The 30% fee is for transactions through the apple subscription service.
This is nothing more than Apple trying to transition to services like AWS, and charging per user.
For all apps: app store review process, CDN servers for distribution, developer tools, developer API for all platforms, CloudKit services, Push Notification servers, iCloud services, Mapping services, In-App purchase processing fees, App Store analytics, etc...
Spotify uses not all, but many of these
Except B&M stores price match
Some do, but often only certain merchants; but that is different from a B&M saying the manufacturer can't advertise in their store that you can buy it cheaper directly, so your point is not valid to the argument.
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They do, starting at $100 as the minimum.
Exactly. Also, if the release notes and app descriptions are in different languages, Apple needs other iOS app reviewers that speak those languages to review the write ups as well.
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Going to be blunt. You are wrong. each reviewer required to do 100 apps a day. That means over 12 apps an hour so less than 5 mins an app for review. That does not cost very much. Plus storage and bandwidth is dirt cheap. You are no where close to what $99 covers for apps.
Please stop spreading this miss infomation that $99 does not cover everything. Apple is making a good amount of profit off the $99 a year. That is going to cover more than the cost of hosting, reviewing and distubing the apps. Apple 15-30% cut is going to be damn near 95% profit for them. That missing 5% is to cover CC fees.
This has got to be the dumbest argument Apple has made in a while. So constraint competition then claim that only 0.5% of their users take advantage of a limitation they introduced.
This is like the NFL making only its helmets certified and then when helmet manufacturers complain, they say but only 1% of players wear your helmets. How does that even make sense?
This is like the NFL making only its helmets certified and then when helmet manufacturers complain, they say but only 1% of players wear your helmets. How does that even make sense?
So if Apple hardware sales subsidize the App Store why do they need to charge a commission for digital media purchases? Especially when the majority of the digital media they are also directly competing with?
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I guess Spotify will have to prove that they would have X number more paying customers if they were able to use their own payment system in-app. I’m not sure how they prove that though.
How many Android users would be infected by Spotify? The answer is 0. Plenty of installers do autoupdates. Let's not pretend like App Store is the only one that does it.
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They would need to if they banned people from buying groceries anywhere but in their own stores. But they don't do it. People can buy the same products they buy at Kroger stores elsewhere including directly from the manufacturers (if those offer their own retail channels).
I already did the math for 10 minutes per review in my previous post. CNBC says that app reviews generally do 50-100 reviews a day. But ok, you say 5 minutes to review an app which is best case scenario. Spotify releases updates every week. So let's redo the math:
5min * 4 updates in a month * 12 months, that's 240 minutes or 4 hours of work. Glassdoor says average $32/hour for an App Store reviewer.
$32 * 4 = Apple needs to pay $128 to review Spotify for 1 year.
You're the one that's wrong.
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How many Android users would be infected by accepting apps from a website? Many. That's one of many reasons why Apple doesn't allow general users to install apps from a website.
Apple doesn't allow third party apps to run in background to self update due to preserving battery life concerns and preserving ram. There's only one auto updater service and that's the App Store.
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FYI Spotify pays enterprise version at $299 a year. Again well under 252 and looking threw there version history they are only doing updates for 10.5 months out of the year so let's give you 11 months to be nice. It is even lower than that.
On top of that it is 5 MIN per app not 10. So using your number it would be at $121 per year. That is well under 299 per year.
So you can try again. Some projects cost more than the average Apple collects but safe to say the entire app store echo system and all the reviews, storage and bandwidth for it cost less than what apple collects in developer membership fees. That makes a health profit.
Your argument MIGHT and I mean MIGHT hold some water if apple charged like google a $25 ONE TIME FEE for life time access.
On top of that it is 5 MIN per app not 10. So using your number it would be at $121 per year. That is well under 299 per year.
So you can try again. Some projects cost more than the average Apple collects but safe to say the entire app store echo system and all the reviews, storage and bandwidth for it cost less than what apple collects in developer membership fees. That makes a health profit.
Your argument MIGHT and I mean MIGHT hold some water if apple charged like google a $25 ONE TIME FEE for life time access.
I use the Enterprise version at my work and I can say it doesn't allow for App Store delivery, so no. Spotify pays $99/year for the App Store distribution (they use TestFlight for internal testing).
Is it possible Spotify is ALSO paying $299 a year for enterprise version? Possible, but that's not needed for App Store delivery.
CNBC article states app store reviewers review 50-100 apps a day (I can link you to the article), which means about 5-10 minutes per review. Let's take the average: 7.5 minutes per review
I see 25 updates in the past 8 months on the App store on my iPhone. There could be more since App Store doesn't show all the updates, but let's just say 25 updates. I can screenshot this if you need proof.
7.5 minutes * 25 updates = 187.5 minutes or 3.125 hours
3.125 hours * $32 an hour = $100 Apple pays for the past 8 months of Spotify updates
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You keep saying $32 per hour, you state it like a fact that Apple's App Store reviewers works in USA.
That's because they do:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/Apple-IOS-App-Reviewer-Hourly-Pay-E1138_D_KO6,22.htm
I also submitted one app to app store with live analytics. During the review, analytics showed the app was being reviewed on an actual device in California.
And then from CNBC ( https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/how-apples-app-review-process-for-the-app-store-works.html )
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note that apple didn't comment on how many are paying the 30%. What if a person starts a subscription and cancels for a month after 11 months and then starts again? Are they a new subscriber again and have to pay 30% all over again?
Also Apple has the big advantage of including Apple Music on every iPHone out of the box. Microsoft was sued for such a practice with Internet Explorer browser and Windows back in the day. They had to decouple the two by order of the government.
Only difference is Windows was on 90%+ of computers.
Apple has a market smaller market share. ~50% in the US maybe. 20% or less worldwide. Higher percentage in richer countries. Lower in poorer countries.
Still from what I read you don't need to own the entire market to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
Also Apple has the big advantage of including Apple Music on every iPHone out of the box. Microsoft was sued for such a practice with Internet Explorer browser and Windows back in the day. They had to decouple the two by order of the government.
Only difference is Windows was on 90%+ of computers.
Apple has a market smaller market share. ~50% in the US maybe. 20% or less worldwide. Higher percentage in richer countries. Lower in poorer countries.
Still from what I read you don't need to own the entire market to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
I think Spotify should be paying the app store fee. They've gotten more free promo than any other single company that's put an app in the App Store. I'd argue Apple has given Spotify more free advertising than Android by far and has been instrumental in getting the app into peoples hands and getting the word out there.
From a recent story: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ve-review-board-run-by-phil-schiller.2186848/
"Reviewers are expected to get through 50 to 100 apps per day, and evaluating most apps takes a short amount of time. "
Assuming 8 hr work days, that is about 5 to 10 min spent reviewing each app.
Because they can. And they can because they provide a service/opportunity to the developer (up to a point, some developers have concluded that the benefits for them aren’t worth the fee, like Spotify and Netflix). With allowing free apps, there are benefits and costs to Apple. With charging a commission for digital content ‘bought’ through the App Store the downside is more limited. More friction for the consumer and thus a less happy consumer and potential reputational damage essentially.
Yes I do, they play dirty and show complete contempt for governments.. they have a track record in this. And how can it be easily verified then, I mean your talking about information only Spotify would actually know...
Apple can say what they want as they aren’t in a court or under oath, this is just an attempt to pursued or manipulate the public and any commission members to their way of thinking.
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That may be, but if I subscribe outside the app, Apple doesn't get a dime, yet I have the same functionality and use the same Apple services you listed above as the person who decided to press the subscribe button in the app and pay through it. I would bet Apple wouldn't even need to collect the processing fee if they'd allow the app makers to embed their own payment systems.
So that one time payment processing fee...what about month 2, 10, 24, 36? Still getting the same services as the out-of-app users, but Apple gets a slice of the pie, for what? CC fees are like 2-3%, not 15 or 30%.
Really? Would you like me to go and get Apples drawings of an oblong with round corners that they used as evidence?
I didn’t forget a thing, I remember the joke evidence Apple presented and how in most courts outside the US it lost.
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Which should tell you something.....
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Your first sentence says it all. And like I said if Apple thought it could get away with taking a cut of Uber and Lyft fees it would do so in a heartbeat. I do wonder what Apple will do when they have their own ride sharing service. All this stuff they’re doing with maps isn’t just to improve the maps app. There are bigger plans here.
Like I said, every single purely free app available on the app store costs Apple money. If it is purely free to use, Apple allows it because it adds value to the ecosystem/platform even though it costs Apple money.
If an app makes money for the developer, Apple deserves something out of it because they were instrumental in someway into getting the user to pay for an app. The only way Apple "isn't" instrumental in getting the user to pay for an app is when the app makes 0 mentions to go to the website to sign up (which apps like Netflix do now)
That is not how businesses work. Money from Mac purchases go back to the Mac department. This is why nearly all large companies have budgets per department. IT budget cannot “borrow” from another department.
Am I the only one who sees the irony of this?
Spotify priced their service at $10 at a time when the App Store Cut was a flat, unnegotiable 30%. The rest of the competition would end up pricing their services around Spotify’s model, and now it’s Spotify who finds their current business model increasingly unsustainable (even with 30% being reduced to 15% and numerous attempts to move users to bypass the App Store).
Spotify is simply reaping what they have sown here. They chose to enter the market with a pricing model which they knew was unsustainable to begin with, Apple is slowly but surely stealing their best customers, and their free tier is costing them money, rather than earning.
How long before Spotify ends up being acquired by amazon or Microsoft, or merges with Netflix?
Spotify priced their service at $10 at a time when the App Store Cut was a flat, unnegotiable 30%. The rest of the competition would end up pricing their services around Spotify’s model, and now it’s Spotify who finds their current business model increasingly unsustainable (even with 30% being reduced to 15% and numerous attempts to move users to bypass the App Store).
Spotify is simply reaping what they have sown here. They chose to enter the market with a pricing model which they knew was unsustainable to begin with, Apple is slowly but surely stealing their best customers, and their free tier is costing them money, rather than earning.
How long before Spotify ends up being acquired by amazon or Microsoft, or merges with Netflix?