Apple clearly could ban paid app in certain jurisdictions. Apple has to pick the best plan that results in the best strategy going forward….maybe rolling over is it…who knows.
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Apple to Collect 27% Commission on Third-Party App Payment Systems in the Netherlands
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Apple will get caught out here by the EU because as others have pointed out, Apple has now exposed themselves to the possible fact that it only takes 3% for using Apples payment system. So where does the other 27% come from? because Apple already charge app developers a yearly fee for using Apple's API's and for hosting their app's. So is this a case of Apple 'double dipping'? charging developers a yearly fee and then a hidden fee (the 27%) for something they are already paying for?
No, it’s not double dipping. In case you are not aware the two are for completely different purposes.
We don’t know where the other 27% comes from. It looks like Apple is going to fight regulators over every percentage point. So if sideloading is mandated they will lower their percentage by x% because they are no longer providing store services. Apple isn‘t going to break out what they are charging for line by line and make things easy for regulators. Some of the charge is for payment processing. Some is for running the Store. Some is for API development ($99/year isn’t nearly enough). Some is for signing/notarization. Some is for developer tools. Etc etc. How much? No one knows. Regulators will have to target each bit individually.
Of course, some of the fee comes from access. Access to the billion+ base of valuable Apple customers. That portion is primarily what developers have taken issue with, but separating out how much Apple is charging for that and determining if that’s a fair rate could take years. Long-term Apple may be forced to allow alternatives at every step of the value chain (i.e. alternatives to IAP, alternatives to App Store, etc.) and for things where alternatives are unfeasible (first party dev tools, APIs) Apple will be forced to license at FRAND rate. Basically Apple is entitled to something, but they won’t get as much as they do now.
Non Sequitur as that 3% likely came from the high end of a "good" rating for a merchant account and says nothing about server, maintenance, personal to oversight on software appeals, electricity, and internet service cost.
Please explain. You can’t just go to court to overthrow democratically based laws.
Apple will not do without the billions it’s raking in from EU consumers. You’re free to believe that - but I say they won’t pull out of that market.
They have to provide fair access. If you think, they’ll do it through charging developers through the roof, that is going to hurt themselves in apps, platform marketshare.
Also, I can‘t quite follow your claim that that would make the products worse? They‘re free to sell the same products and services as today.
It may actually make them better, if it rids them of the annoying ads and prompts pestering consumers to sign up to Apple Music and Pay and gives consumers more choice.
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Pretty sure PayPal and stripe handle more orders and they just charge around 3-5% per transaction. 30% is insane.
But, you don't see Uber challenging the Taxi's by forcing an Uber payment option in a Taxi cab. They compete with a different driver, different vehicle, and different pricing. Not hail a cab and pay Uber for the ride.
Acting and controlling. For this to "be" they would have been brought up on charges for "being" a monopoly. They would also have to lose in court to said charges. All we have so far is opinions and feelings. Not laws and convictions of said laws.
Having your business depend on my business is not good business. if my business goes away, so does yours. You should be able to stand on your/my own.
Not either Apple's or Google's fault or problem. Success is not illegal.
And people would complain about any charge Apple or Google applies. Any. That's the problem. People want it lower. But, will not state how much lower. Just lower. Ok, Apple in the Netherlands went to 27% instead of 30 for letting 3rd-party charges operate. They get 27% which under the law is allowed to collect their commissions.
Still not enough, still not fair. So what is? .50c is now fair per IAP. What if you only spent in that IAP .99c? So Apple will be VERY happy to get over 50% per .99c IAP. They will not stop you there. For the Dev to make good money, every IAP would have to be at least $5 (4.99). So it's 10% fair? It will be for a week or two. Then they will want to renegotiate.
I have a better idea. Apple's Appstore is only for Apple products. No 3rd party anything on the store anymore.
They want to get on the iPhone/iPad. Then make a web app. Done. They don't owe Apple anything, and they are prevented from compromising my iDevice with a 3rd party store or bogus app with too many ways to hook into the OS. Everyone gets what they want.
Fortnite is free.
PUBG is free.
Roblox is free.
WWE Champions 2022 is free.
SimCity Buildit is..... FREE
Candy/Soda Crush. Free.....
All with IAP.
Litterally running my finger across the Games section of the store. All top games are free with IAP.
Unless it's in the Apple Arcade. Which goes off a subscription.
Same for the Apps. At least 50& are IAP. 25% have their own subscriptions, 10 or so & are social media so they are "free". The rest buy you something tangible like Starbucks or Amazon, UBER, etc.
As Factbox: Uber's legal challenges around the world shows Uber has a lot of other problems.
"Germany’s highest court ruled in December 2018 that a defunct limousine service offered by Uber but taken out of service in 2014 was illegal" (...)
NETHERLANDS
In March 2019, Uber paid around 2.3 million euros ($2.79 million) to settle a case that found it had offered unlicensed taxi services in 2014-2015."
No. They don’t want to tear it down and there’s no great conspiracy here. The EU isn’t Anti-American. And it doesn’t even have smartphone manufacturers that could replace Apple.
They want a level playing field and more room for competition in digital markets - rather than Apple siphoning away 30% of everything and steering consumers to their own services.
We‘ll see. Their options seem quite limited - except when charging for dev tools. But somebody else may come up with alternatives. Also, Apple would hurt their own app ecosystem.
Taxis either don’t have monopolist (or duopolist) power. Or it’s legally tolerated by concessions.
Don’t be ridiculous. Division of labour has been around in human economies since the Stone Age. It’s been a cornerstone of human economic history and the evolution of modern civilisation.
Competition law isn’t about being at fault. Neither is laws such as the EU DMA (and the US‘ similar proposal).
You should float that idea with Timmy.
Forgoing not only all app sales but also compromising the iOS user experience when you want to sell iPhones for billions of dollars?
Such retaliatory phantasy is the equivalent of shooting yourself in both your own feet - with only one shot.
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Taking payment twice isn't illegal as long as its agreed upon. Saying you have to pay $100 + 30% is perfectly legal.
It'd very common, even for consumers, to pay both a fixed price and a percentage.
The $100 is a membership fee for the Apple Developer Program.
The 15/30% is commission for the developer having appointed Apple to be their commissionaire and agent for the sale, marketing and distribution of the apps.
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Designing an “antitrust“ law that only targets a few American companies is by definition discriminatory. And the EU has a strong history of trying to go after US tech giants specifically. The fact that they have no companies that could replace Apple is exactly why they are going after them- if there were viable EU tech giants the attitude would be very different. They 100% have the right to go after anti-competitive behavior (which Apple may be engaged in) but the DMA tries to single out specific companies and punish them. Of course, Apple makes bad laws like this more likely by refusing to compromise on the very legitimate concerns regulators have about its business practices. But DMA is another Margareth Vestagar ploy to hurt US tech giants (and like her other plots, may not work out). There is a reason the Biden Administration, even as it pursues tech antitrust at home, has pushed back against this bill.
First they need to prove that Apple is not entitled to its commission for the services and platform it provides, unlike all other companies. Apple will probably have to give in in the end but this will take years.
The end goal here would be to allow Apple to demand royalties from use of its IP but forbid the current “revenue sharing” model. In that case Apple would be forced to suck it up and take the loss because it can’t actually start charging developers for free apps without killing iOS’s vibrant third party app ecosystem.
Apple is taken their commission at the point of sale to buyers.
Also, all Apple developers has signed a contract in which they appoint Apple to be their commissionaire and agent for the sale, distribution and marketing of the apps. That's why Apple charges a commission.
If your interpretation is correct, Epic, will have a huge problem with the licensing of their Unreal engine since it's quite similar. Epic charges a commission from the developer independent of which store or platform the game is sold. Most of the time, Epic, is not involved in the sale, payment or distribution of the game at all.
The apps themselves aren't Apple's IP, but they use Apple's IP to create them and when they are run on a device.
Everything in which Apple created is Apple's IP. So every line of code an Apple employee wrote is Apple's IP and when Netflix or Facebook invoke that code using an Apple-provided API they are using Apple's IP.
It's impossible to create an iOS app without using Apple's IP. It's the same with a Windows program. You have to use Microsoft's IP.
So-called “competition law” that is written to narrowly target a few very specific companies is anything but. DMA is the kind of anti-American nonsense I would expect out of the EU, but Competition and Innovation Act is an idiotic self-own by the US government. It doesn’t update existing antitrust statutes, it merely singles out a few big US companies for being ”bad” (eg Amazon can’t self preference but Target and Walmart can).
The Open App Markets Act is different, I think it has some flaws but it theoretically addresses some very problematic behavior by Apple. The problem is, as I said earlier, that forcing Apple to allow sideloading will not stop it from collecting a commission. If they want this bill to actually work as intended they need to account for that AND do it in a way that doesn’t single Apple out from all other companies that profit from their IP and services.
So many of these bills/rulings are problematic because they single out Apple from other companies. Basically Epic can charge commissions, Microsoft can lock down Xbox, but when Apple engages in the same behavior it is “wrong”- just because Apple makes money on iPhone hardware? It doesn’t work like that. Regulators need to be very very careful to write laws that don’t single Apple out but also aren’t too broad and end up hurting entire industries. Fairest outcome I see is Apple gets a commission but at lower, FRAND negotiated rate- basically they deserve compensation just like everyone else, but iOS is just “too important” to let them dictate the terms unilaterally.
The copyright holder can decide which one to prosecute or not. They can discriminate. They can charge money for its use for some people and not for others.
It's in the name: copyright = holding the right to copy
In contrast with patents, the copyright holder doesn't loose copyright just because they don't enforce it or enforce it uniformly.
They had Nokia and Ericsson. Which the later had a partnership with Sony (Sony-Ericsson). Of which I have had all 3 of those branded phones in the US. They "had" their own, but like Motorola...
Again, this was "had". Why do we blame Apple for the 30% rate, when one did not exist pre iPhone/AppStore? Developers didn't have to even bother writing an App if the commission was too high. They could have called on Motorola, Sony/Ericsson, Nokia, BlackBerry, the original Android/Google to push for better rates and options. And state loudly and clearly. That they would write applications for any and all of them if they would compete against the overly high costs of Apple's Appstore. Apple does not force nor could it force any developer to make an App. So why should it work the other way? Why should anyone force Apple to charge less? You want it for less? Don't buy it.
Let Apple hurt their own ecosystem. Isn't that the ultimate point? Other companies have come and gone for less. Let Apple fail with their model. I'll wait.
That's not uncommon at all and not illegal.
Take the insurance business. A lot of large insurance companies contracts with smaller companies (agents) to sell insurances on their behalf. Here in Norway it's not uncommon for that agent to receive a provision for all new insurances that customer gets for the first year or two even if they, the agent, is not involved in all the sales.
So if the agent does acquire a new customer on the behalf of the insurance company they might get 50% of the insurances they were able to sell and maybe 10% of all other insurances (even if they were not involved) for the first year.
This was determined by contract which both parties agreed to. Businesses in EU have wide latitude in deciding how their contracts are constituted.
IOS isn't a public utility and shouldn't be regulated as such. And, imo, consumer facing electronic device manufacturers shouldn't be regulated on popularity, especially when their businesses are run legally.
Thank you for correcting @I7guy. See. You left out that everything that digital services created is their IP, including their Apps. I wonder why.
Don’t understand where is the doubt considering that this kinds of IP ownership questions come over and over again as a counter argument for regulation.
PS: Apple indeed bring their contributions to the market place. But it’s not the only one. If there weren’t for third party digital services contributions, iPhones and Android devices wouldn’t have the importance it has to today in peoples daily life’s. Take for instance Windows Phones … it’s a case study where the lack of third party contributions largely lead to its demise.
The idea that some people here might have that this is a “one man show” and everyone else is a bitch … it does not look like it will end well … will see how that goes.
Synergies.
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