Apple Says Spotify Wants 'Limitless Access' to App Store Tools Without Paying

[strongy]

Apple wants access to the market in the EU without paying its fair share in taxes.

Apple Takes on EU’s Vestager in Record $14 Billion Tax Fight

Apple Inc. fights the world’s biggest tax case in a quiet courtroom this week, trying to rein in the European Union’s powerful antitrust chief ahead of a potential new crackdown on internet giants.

www.bloomberg.com

they paid exactly what ireland told them to pay, its the eu that cried about it

 

[iLondoner]

Apple should pull the plug on the App Store in EU countries. Though I am not a fan of Brexit this is one occasion when I am glad the UK is no longer under the EU thumb.

 

[mcled53]

Actually Apple is getting more and more nonsense.
Why do so many people STILL defend Apple's unlimited greed?

Their greed is NOT a monopoly like Amazon's. You can alway buy Android and get pretty much the same User experience.

 

[djphat2000]

is apple hosting Spotify content?

why is apple trying to bill 0.50 per install for an app on an phone apple does not own and sells for an high price?

spotify is still paying the yearly dev fees right?

$99 a year.

 

[djphat2000]

Then what is the yearly developer fee paying for?

development tools to create apps. Not sell apps.

 

[hans1972]

Then what is the yearly developer fee paying for?

Membership fee in the developer program.

 

[djphat2000]

Um, yeah. You're in the market as a competitor to them. When you undertake that, you should surrender certain anticompetitive practices, including effectively charging your competitor to compete with you on your own platform.

Name one store that does this? I walk into a Best Buy store and look for HDMI cables. I find Best Buy branded cables at 10x less than a brand name cable. Both do the same thing. Store brand is less. And they do charge the name brand company to be in the store and get a cut when it is sold.

 

[hans1972]

Why can I install anything on windows, Mac, Linux; but Apple wants to charge?

They are different systems.

 

[hans1972]

So if you buy an iphone, your soul belongs to apple!? I didn't read that in the EULA /s
Enjoy being a product.

No, but iOS is like a gated community with a strict home owner association controlled by Apple.
Visitors only by appointment and walls to keep the riff raff out.

 

[djphat2000]

Running the App Store costs money. It should be easy to quantify how much, make that data auditable, add a decent margin, and bill that cost to Spotify and other large Apps publishers. This is how it works for electricity, telecom services and other utilities. I don't see why it should not work for the App Store.

Apple is neither of those types of companies. You don't have to be on the platform, you don't have to use it. You have options. They want to be on the App Store for FREE and not pay Apple Anything other than the $99 yearly fee. Heck, everyone would love that too. But, that's not how a store works. It is perfectly OK for a store to sell its product at a lower price than a competitors product for practically everything we buy today. Walmart is going to by Vizio. You think that TV is going to be more expensive than a SONY or an LG sold in the same store? You think Walmart isn't getting a cut of the sale price of that SONY or LG sold in its stores?

 

[cocky jeremy]

I can't believe Apple prioritizing their own products over a competitor's. How crazy.

 

[hans1972]

I think developers just want it like macOS, which is fair.

Yes, but I as a user don't want the macOS experience on the iPhone.

In fact, I would have liked for it be only one store on macOS too. Unfortunately, Apple isn't powerful enough to force other developers to use the Mac App Store.

 

[hans1972]

Sounds like Apple's business is maximising profit not respecting developers or end users.

Maybe both statements can be true at the same time?

No, they should treat developers as second class citizens and if there has to be power sharing it's between Apple and end users.

 

[hans1972]

If Apple isn't making enough from the $99 to run an app store, as far as I'm concerned they can shut it down.

If developers can handle a 15 or 30% they should look for work on Linux.
We just don't want them on iOS.

 

[hans1972]

That's the thing. Due to a deal with Google, they aren't.

That's stupid for Google. Or maybe they can't handle making money.

 

[hans1972]

They did. Apple have appealed it to death as you would expect.

They are happy to freeload when it suits but heaven forbid someone has a mobile app and doesn't pay them rent.

The EU Commission lost and it's the EU who appealed.

It's Ireland who is accused of wrongdoing here, not Apple. Apple is just an innocent bystander which will be affected by the final decision.

 

[hans1972]

The Switch is not a general compute platform that billions of people's lives are entrenched into. The stakes are dramatically different. If iOS only sold games and iPhones were a hobby, you would have a point.

And even EUs regulation don't care about it's being a general computing platform.

Neither Macs, Chromebooks or Linux machines were regulated by the DMA yet they are a general computing platform.

 

[hans1972]

They did not create the laws for it yet. It's time they did. They are working on it. In fact, some regulations do exist (they do not have to be laws). For example, government requires that all smart phones properly handled 911 calls.

They require all phones connecting to the telephone network to handle emergency numbers, not computer platforms.

 

[erikkfi]

Name one store that does this? I walk into a Best Buy store and look for HDMI cables. I find Best Buy branded cables at 10x less than a brand name cable. Both do the same thing. Store brand is less. And they do charge the name brand company to be in the store and get a cut when it is sold.

An iPhone is not a store.

 

[KidAKidB]

Every single time Apple tries to argue their stance the more scummy they sound.

 

[cupcakes2000]

Apple is just an innocent bystander

Hahaha what? Innocent? Why are they and all the other trading under irelands system in the first place?! Sure it’s legal, but there is nothing innocent about it.

 

[hans1972]

Actually Apple is getting more and more nonsense.
Why do so many people STILL defend Apple's unlimited greed?

Because we don't really care how much Apple makes. We want a locked down platform which is controlled by one entity. Think about it as enlightened despotism.

 

[GroovyCatticus]

Exactly. Developers *SHOULD* leave but they don't. I don't understand why they can't just all band together and leave all at the same time to force change.

I'm all for market forces speaking 100%.


Don't know what this quote is supposed to accomplish.

If all the iOS developers left, I'd leave iOS and buy an Android for native apps. See how that works? Let the market speak, not the gov.

They don’t leave because, unlike your fantasy, 99.99% of developers are perfectly happy with the App Store fees.

Why you believe differently is an interesting question 😂

 

[applepotato666]

Then what's the yearly $100 developer fee for? Weren't they saying that's for supporting the App Store and the core technologies they're suddenly charging again for? The only thing Apple has to host is the app. The rest is handled by Spotify. And as far as I know, Spotify isn't even built on Apple tools for iOS specifically. It's developed with React Native.

The "you get access to all Apple users" argument is so stupid. Developers is what make the iPhone. I'm not buying an iPhone because it has an app called "App Store", I'm buying it because it can get the apps I need and I don't care where from that would happen and how they call it.

Makes sense for indie developers that they might get some exposure thanks to Apple. But that's not at all promised once you sign up. Actually they don't even do it at all. The apps Apple pushes on the home page of the app store are the same as they were 4+ years ago. Clash of Clans and the same 5 Arcade games, a few photo editing apps that are extremely popular already, Duolingo and similar that everybody and their grandma has heard of. These companies have huge marketing departments already and don't need Apple to promote them, yet they are taking up those spaces. Imagine if Facebook was not available on the iPhone, their market share in Europe would certainly be hurt by that. Never have I seen Apple promoting an indie dev's app on the store. Most apps I have, I found out about them through developers' self-promotion. When I first got an iPhone there were several times where I was like "Ok let's check out what's new on the App Store" only to be met with the same 5 apps. Apple does not acknowledge devs in the beginning and unless they gain some serious mainstream traction, they never will. I doubt they even check with the amount of scam apps that pass through their "rigorous inspections" so they can put the false idea that it's them who helped you get there to rest.

Clearly, they think that right now the risk of developers abandoning the platform is worth it because they have the heavier hand and switching to another service is easier than making a new hardware purchase should somebody decide to leave the App Store. But all it takes for such a house of cards to crumble is a few major players to pull out in a sign of protest. We've seen this type of digital protests happen in a day.

 

[hans1972]

Apple mandates that only the Safari browser engine may be used on iOS, and they deliberately hold it back so that web apps can't become too good to compete with App Store apps. So no, going to the browser is not an option. Apple thought of that.

Exactly the way I want it.

It seems that almost everything Apple does aligns with my wishes.