Apple to Collect 27% Commission on Third-Party App Payment Systems in the Netherlands

[Sophisticatednut]

Which raises the eternal question - just which is it for Apple? Are they losing their way because they are supposedly prioritising profits over everything else, are is Apple’s phenomenal profits simply the result of making great products that people are willing to pay a premium for?

Yes, people can point to the myriad of flaws with Apple products, but if we want to argue along that line, which company can really claim to have successfully shipped products without any flaws whatsoever, much less managed to sustain that over an extended period of time?

You look at how Google cancels products left and right, flitting from one product concept to the next like a butterfly with ADHD. In contrast, Apple continues to build and iterate on their products year after year without fail, from iMessage to the Apple Watch, and consumers vote with their wallets, and is it any surprise why they continue to dominate their respective product categories?

I really don’t understand why people seem surprised that Apple continues to keep reporting stellar quarterly results. To me, Apple makes great products, and as long as they continue to put out great products, there is no reason to be surprised by their performance in the marketplace.

Apple is loosing its way as its constantly shifting from providing great products to maximize profit margins. You could call it boiling the frog or death by a thousand cuts.

Apple product have with every iteration become more and more consumer hostile.
Special screws to prevent access. Gluing the battery down.
Soldering the RAM to be permanent in 2013
Soldering the SSD to prevent upgradability in 2015.
Apple removed the data recovery port in MacBook Pro 2018

Introduce software to prevent battery replacement in the iPhone. Then you couldn’t replace the screen and now you can’t even replace the camera unless apple verify the hardware.

Making it harder and harder for third party repairs to do their job by limiting access to schematics and hardware.

Nobody is dismissing the fact the product is great and it makes them money. It’s just everything else smells rotten and greedy and anti consumer

 

[I7guy]

Apple is loosing its way as its constantly shifting from providing great products to maximize profit margins. You could call it boiling the frog or death by a thousand cuts.

No it's not.

Apple product have with every iteration become more and more consumer hostile.

No they haven't.

Special screws to prevent access. Gluing the battery down.
Soldering the RAM to be permanent in 2013
Soldering the SSD to prevent upgradability in 2015.
Apple removed the data recovery port in MacBook Pro 2018

Apple products in general have become more reliable and sturdy. Unfortunately getting the products there results in repairability compromised.

Introduce software to prevent battery replacement in the iPhone. Then you couldn’t replace the screen and now you can’t even replace the camera unless apple verify the hardware.

Stupid stuff that was since fixed.

Making it harder and harder for third party repairs to do their job by limiting access to schematics and hardware.

They have been like this for years.

Nobody is dismissing the fact the product is great and it makes them money. It’s just everything else smells rotten and greedy and anti consumer

No it doesn't.

 

[draugminaion]

Apple is loosing its way as its constantly shifting from providing great products to maximize profit margins. You could call it boiling the frog or death by a thousand cuts.

Apple product have with every iteration become more and more consumer hostile.
Special screws to prevent access. Gluing the battery down.
Soldering the RAM to be permanent in 2013
Soldering the SSD to prevent upgradability in 2015.
Apple removed the data recovery port in MacBook Pro 2018

Introduce software to prevent battery replacement in the iPhone. Then you couldn’t replace the screen and now you can’t even replace the camera unless apple verify the hardware.

Making it harder and harder for third party repairs to do their job by limiting access to schematics and hardware.

Nobody is dismissing the fact the product is great and it makes them money. It’s just everything else smells rotten and greedy and anti consumer

That is the narrative you have been bamboozled to believe.

Repairability is a tradeof.
Components in a connector or screwed on will make the device bulkier, more expensive to produce and more prone to problems than with soldered or glued down components.

More repairable devices need more repairs.

Very repairable modular phones exist, allmost nobody wants them.
I know someone who had a Fairphone, it became wonky after a year with the source of the problem unclear. They gave up on it.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Apple products in general have become more reliable and sturdy. Unfortunately getting the products there results in repairability compromised.

They haven’t become more reliable or sturdy. The have been basically the same except with this butterfly keyboard disaster.
And repairs have only become more expensive for no gains as they are artificially more complicated.
And their reliability have become worse
SSD can’t be replaced or recovered directly, but apple did have a recovery port you could use until 2018.

Since 2018 if you motherboard or anything failed you storage would be lost forever as the port is removed

Unless you can precent evidence for this “improvement “

Stupid stuff that was since fixed.

You can’t change the iPhone 13 screen
Oops mistake we fixed
You can’t change the camera
Oops mistake we fixed
You can’t change the battery
Oops mistake we fixed

They have been like this for years.

Is this an excuse for becoming worse every year?

 

[I7guy]

They haven’t become more reliable or sturdy. The have been basically the same except with this butterfly keyboard disaster.
And repairs have only become more expensive for no gains as they are artificially more complicated.
And their reliability have become worse
SSD can’t be replaced or recovered directly, but apple did have a recovery port you could use until 2018.

Since 2018 if you motherboard or anything failed you storage would be lost forever as the port is removed

Unless you can precent evidence for this “improvement “

You can’t change the iPhone 13 screen
Oops mistake we fixed
You can’t change the camera
Oops mistake we fixed
You can’t change the battery
Oops mistake we fixed

Is this an excuse for becoming worse every year?

Basically picking one off things combined with some opinions to make a general case based on the products one wants to discuss.

I disagree with the premise. Form, function and repairability is a trade off.

 

[AppliedMicro]

Given that retailers must accept Apple’s terms in order to sell their products, I’d say page 1 of the licence agreement applies:

I as the end user don’t (have to) care about the retailer’s agreement with Apple.
Neither am I presented the agreement (in reasonable form) before purchase.
So I‘m not bound by it (well, in Europe at least.

From Apple’s standpoint, what they offer developers is access to Apple’s user base in order to sell apps to, but as far as Apple (and I) am concerned, I remain a customer of Apple’s first and foremost, not the developer’s.

That’s the thing I don‘t agree with as a consumer:
When I‘m downloading an app from the app store, I am, primarily, a customer of the developer. After all, the „made“ the app, they‘re getting 70% of the (net) price and they provide technical support. And the App Store terms state that Apple is only acting as their „agent“ or „commissionaire“.

When I‘m buy a date matching, video or tutorial subscription or virtual in-game content, I’m all the more a customer of the app maker’s - not Apple.

But make no mistake, competition may, but is not guaranteed to, lead to better margins for app developers. But it will likely lead to less convenience and potentially higher prices for consumers.

That’s counterintuitive and against conventional economic wisdom. More competition usually leads to lower prices for consumers, and that can be observed in many other industries.
What it may: drive a “race to the bottom” in terms of quality, (sometimes) convenience or selection and product differentiation. But then, Apple and their products have proven exceptionally resilient to that (for the sectors they’re operating in), and customers seem willing to pay a premium for their services.

Apple product have with every iteration become more and more consumer hostile.
Special screws to prevent access. Gluing the battery down.
Soldering the RAM to be permanent in 2013
Soldering the SSD to prevent upgradability in 2015.
Apple removed the data recovery port in MacBook Pro 2018

To be fair, they seem to be making concessions and changes on their stance on repairability lately (and I believe that things like soldered RAM are indeed rather driven by technological intergration, not their bottom line.

 

[robco74]

I as the end user don’t (have to) care about the retailer’s agreement with Apple.
Neither am I presented the agreement (in reasonable form) before purchase.
So I‘m not bound by it (well, in Europe at least.

That’s the thing I don‘t agree with as a consumer:
When I‘m downloading an app from the app store, I am, primarily, a customer of the developer. After all, the „made“ the app, they‘re getting 70% of the (net) price and they provide technical support. And the App Store terms state that Apple is only acting as their „agent“ or „commissionaire“.

When I‘m buy a date matching, video or tutorial subscription or virtual in-game content, I’m all the more a customer of the app maker’s - not Apple.

That’s counterintuitive and against conventional economic wisdom. More competition usually leads to lower prices for consumers, and that can be observed in many other industries.
What it may: drive a “race to the bottom” in terms of quality, (sometimes) convenience or selection and product differentiation. But then, Apple and their products have proven exceptionally resilient to that (for the sectors they’re operating in), and customers seem willing to pay a premium for their services.

To be fair, they seem to be making concessions and changes on their stance on repairability lately (and I believe that things like soldered RAM are indeed rather driven by technological intergration, not their bottom line.

Initially there will be lower prices as competitors enter the market. However, not everyone will be able to sustain lower prices forever. Nor will every competitor be able to keep up with quality and innovation. Inevitably, some of the competitors will drop out of the market. Once that happens, downward pressure on prices ease. The airline industry is a great example. Fares go up, new airlines take off. Fares drop. The major players can often absorb the hit, but some of the smaller ones can't. They either get absorbed by competitors or go bankrupt (see Wow Air, or the US carriers Frontier and Spirit). Once the competition is reduced, fares go up again.

As for you purchasing from the developer, that's all true, however the tools used to create the app were provided by Apple, they deserve some consideration for that. Hosting, bandwidth, marketing, payment processing, etc. can be handled by others or by the developer, but that will still be a cost to them. It may wind up being less than what Apple charges, but there are no guarantees that will happen. One benefit of larger companies is economies of scale and shared overhead. Each competing service will have their own fixed costs.

This isn't a slam dunk for developers, and many prefer the devil they know. The question right now, at least in the US, is whether or not Apple will be allowed to continue to operate the store. Or if the conditions placed upon them will make operating the store unprofitable or unpalatable.

The US and EU have been drifting apart for years. The world is a much different place than it was after the war. The ties that bound us together are weakening for many reasons. We are no longer each others' most valuable trading partner, or market for goods. There are many other ascendant markets that we both compete in. I can understand why Europeans are upset with the hegemony of US tech companies, especially given the tax situation (which is a little ironic, considering it's the double Dutch with an Irish sandwich).

The EU can and should be encouraging more entrepreneurship so they can have more major players and provide real competition for MANGA.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

That is the narrative you have been bamboozled to believe.

Repairability is a tradeof.
Components in a connector or screwed on will make the device bulkier, more expensive to produce and more prone to problems than with soldered or glued down components.

Screws and connectors doesn’t make something bulkier MacBook Air 2011 is just as bulky as the 2020 version. Glue increases the chance of puncturing the battery and no way to remove or connect to the storage for data recovery is extremely bad with zero benefits

More repairable devices need more repairs.

Only at a point. Apple actively designed their products to be unrepairable.

Very repairable modular phones exist, allmost nobody wants them.
I know someone who had a Fairphone, it became wonky after a year with the source of the problem unclear. They gave up on it.

You don’t need to have a modular phone to be repairable. Only the ability to replace the most commonly damaged parts. Such as screen, battery, camera and port.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

To be fair, they seem to be making concessions and changes on their stance on repairability lately (and I believe that things like soldered RAM are indeed rather driven by technological intergration, not their bottom line.

that’s fair when it comes to the ram outside it’s implementation in the iMac and Mac mini for some reason. And their concessions seems to more from legislative push and regulatory fears such as right to repair in USA an EU gaining traction

 

[Nuno Lopes]

Part of the problem is that categories like producer, merchant, store, customer and supplier that used to be quite neat have become messy and outdated in the digital age.

Well, that is the wrong conclusion. The digital age did not change the concept of components / things. Where is components there are suppliers and consumers of those components. People and entities have always been customers and suppliers at the same time between each other because of this. In fact , the digital landscape it is entirely built on this concepts, even technically (as well as others).

The problem is that we now have acute Marketing that we have never had before that basically dilutes perception … cirurgically target to change well known and tested conventions that enabled the incredible market we have today.

I give you a practical example. Everyone understands the difference between an Engine of a Car and a Car. The difference between a Car and Transportation. As much as we understand the difference between an iPhone and Apps. Apps and the use of Apps. Take Netflix App. Everyone understand the difference between the iPhone and the Netflix App. The difference between the Netflix App and say an Iron Man movie. Further more the difference between the both and watching Iron Man on the Netflix App. People know these differences.

What companies never been attempted, is say, by selling and engine of the Car than charge 30% of the sale of the Car, and then the Uber rides that use the Car. That has never been attempted and this is what Apple is attempting. To supply and charge for the engine to the Car/App buyer, than charge for the engine again to the Car Manufacturer, than charge for the Sale of the Car that uses the engine, and than finally charge for the using the Car … fabugastic …

People here use arguments such as, if it wasn’t for the engine, there would be no Car, no Car no Uber rides with the Car … Apple is just protecting their IP so on and so forth … It‘s a mess, because the starting point is as much fallacious as it could be. There is no way to know if there was not such a particular engine there would be no Uber, or Uber like service … no way to know. Neither we can assume that comes in consequence … like this innovation were predetermined by Apple creation. What we migtht consider is that is a very competent engine for a Car ... that is all there is to it … nothing else.

What do we know then? It’s that the engine of the Car is useful in the context of a Car. The Car is useful in the context of ride .. and so on and so forth. Not the other way around. An App its not useful because of the iPhone ... it is because it solves a problem or fills a desire users have.

So there indeed more value in creating context around a thing that the thing itself ... when both are outstanding booooommm market cap. Indeed digital businesses are the ones creating context for Apple technology … not taking its value themselves at any point by providing their Apps… but actually adding value to it, contributing their value empowering Apple to sell even more iPhone. Apple could have the best smarphone technology on the planet, which I agree, my preference, yet without the native Apps would be worth 0 like many other tech that never moved on … some never found context.

Developer that know all the above, some of them like you do not, aren’t at all being greedy. At most want more balanced App Store policies, pay per use … and stop devaluing their properties!!!

The reason why Apple is selling iPhones / iOS licenses like mad, is not just because it the smartphone is great, but also and in great part because YOU are creating context making it more valuable, not the other way around. If there is one that should share revenue is not YOU. In fact, digital businesses are far more valuable to Apple than Apple is to digital businesses. All this wonder around Apple iPhone achievements have brought a lot of inferiority complex with with no mapping to reality … if not for the wonder fact.

Using rules that were made when these categories were neater causes problems.

No. What is causing problems is precisely certain companies that make “engines” feel entitled to a revenue share of say the prize of winning a race with the Car using the engine. Case in case Apple have been able to market this idea very well … to the point that they argue that if they are regulated to avoid such “abuse”, people security will be in danger. It crazy, absolutely crazy. Hunger Games crazy.

Here is what I my instincts tell me. The next big thing will not come from Apple. Why? Not because find that the company does not have the resources, quite contrary. But as usual these start adopting practices that aim to crystallise everyone around them, as usually they end up crystallising themselves. I systematically have observed this pattern, case in case IBM and Microsoft … leading to an eventual collapse of their business model. Now, some companies are able to turn around and reinvent themselves, case in case Microsoft when that happens. Others, happen the unthinkable, become irrelevant is worst ... vanish ... like Nokia. The case of Apple is interesting because in all reality it has only one Hero product justifying the growth of everything else, the iPhone.

The way I see it, Apple Smart Cars will go the same way has the HomePod if it follows the HomePode extremely closed model, even more than the iPhone. Or if the goes the iPhone route I don't see many touching to enrich it with context ... it needs to be something that flys for that to happen ... and it will not! There are already plenty of very competent electric cars out there ... and judging by Siri ... it does not look like that Apple AI is really ahead of the game.

Back to the App Store, ... here is the thing I'm seeing. After the incredible App boom, I'm starting not to find a lot of interesting ands useful things / Apps that are happening elsewhere. Especially productivity apps. Even at cases, that I find it for iOS, have a weak implementation. Just the other day, an App that I find useful announced to be leaving the App Store. In other words, companies that could otherwise enrich the ecosystem, provide even more context to the iPhone, iPad and so on ... look like are falling back. Maybe the future is really the Web browser ... who knows ...

I think it was you who mentioned ... "Why does Facebook even need to be an App?". I answered that there are natural advantage of having a native app compared say to a web app ... performance one of them. But the real question that I find the answer puzzling and whose obvious answer nonsensical ... "Why wouldn't Apple want it to be an native App?" You see, even if Apple charged zero for the sale of an App, there is still equity in it for Apple to capitalize big. It is bringing more context to the ecosystem, more value to their iPhones and iOS. A value that macOS had difficulties capturing against Windows for decades ... hence its reduced market share.

Apple technology alone, as good as it is for the PC ... never went beyond 10%, and its revenue its a footnote when compared to the iPhone. Context is king ... and the iPhone enjoys a hell lot more context than macOS.

The next big thing will most probably come from another garage and we will see another huge shift in value. It may not even be digital … who knows.

Cheers.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Initially there will be lower prices as competitors enter the market. However, not everyone will be able to sustain lower prices forever. Nor will every competitor be able to keep up with quality and innovation. Inevitably, some of the competitors will drop out of the market. Once that happens, downward pressure on prices ease. The airline industry is a great example. Fares go up, new airlines take off. Fares drop. The major players can often absorb the hit, but some of the smaller ones can't. They either get absorbed by competitors or go bankrupt (see Wow Air, or the US carriers Frontier and Spirit). Once the competition is reduced, fares go up again.

Well this haven’t happened in EU we still have trans continental flights for less than 100$ or even 50$ a ticket available on a regular basis.

As for you purchasing from the developer, that's all true, however the tools used to create the app were provided by Apple, they deserve some consideration for that. Hosting, bandwidth, marketing, payment processing, etc. can be handled by others or by the developer, but that will still be a cost to them. It may wind up being less than what Apple charges, but there are no guarantees that will happen. One benefit of larger companies is economies of scale and shared overhead. Each competing service will have their own fixed costs.

What economic overhead is there? Stripe for example provide everything apple does but with 90% less costs. And apple already took their part of the developers membership fee and initial commission on the sale to cover their marketing, bandwidth and hosting. Unless they want to ad some extra charge for free apps

This isn't a slam dunk for developers, and many prefer the devil they know. The question right now, at least in the US, is whether or not Apple will be allowed to continue to operate the store. Or if the conditions placed upon them will make operating the store unprofitable or unpalatable.

It might be unprofitable depending how USA impact it. But apple will never abandon the store. Just as they haven’t abandoned the Mac AppStore even tho it has mostly failed.

The US and EU have been drifting apart for years. The world is a much different place than it was after the war. The ties that bound us together are weakening for many reasons. We are no longer each others' most valuable trading partner, or market for goods. There are many other ascendant markets that we both compete in. I can understand why Europeans are upset with the hegemony of US tech companies, especially given the tax situation (which is a little ironic, considering it's the double Dutch with an Irish sandwich).

That is indeed kind of ironic, but also a thing EU companies can’t compete with or abuse as long as they exist inside of any EU member state the taxes will always be payed to the home country. And is a major reason for the friction against us companies

The EU can and should be encouraging more entrepreneurship so they can have more major players and provide real competition for MANGA.

They can’t compete with companies paying 0.6% in taxes. Corporate tax is 20% on average in EU. And as discovered almost all us tech companies have payed less than 1% in taxes for 20% with the double Irish loophole.

 

[mrochester]

Well this haven’t happened in EU we still have trans continental flights for less than 100$ or even 50$ a ticket available on a regular basis.

What economic overhead is there? Stripe for example provide everything apple does but with 90% less costs. And apple already took their part of the developers membership fee and initial commission on the sale to cover their marketing, bandwidth and hosting. Unless they want to ad some extra charge for free apps

It might be unprofitable depending how USA impact it. But apple will never abandon the store. Just as they haven’t abandoned the Mac AppStore even tho it has mostly failed.

That is indeed kind of ironic, but also a thing EU companies can’t compete with or abuse as long as they exist inside of any EU member state the taxes will always be payed to the home country. And is a major reason for the friction against us companies

They can’t compete with companies paying 0.6% in taxes. Corporate tax is 20% on average in EU. And as discovered almost all us tech companies have payed less than 1% in taxes for 20% with the double Irish loophole.

Stripe is 1.4% + 20p for European cards and 2.9% + 20p for non-European cards. Apple charge 3% for payment processing.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Well, that is the wrong conclusion. The digital age did not change the concept of components / things. In fact it is entirely built on this concepts, even technically (as well as others).

The problem is that we now have acute Marketing that we have never had before that basically dilutes perception … cirurgically target to change well know and tested conventions that enabled the incredible market we have today.

I give you a practical example. Everyone understands the difference between an Engine of a Car and a Car. The difference between a Car and Transportation. As much as we understand the difference between an iPhone and Apps. Apps and the use of Apps. Take Netflix App. There everyone understand the difference between the iPhone and the Netflix App. The difference between the Netflix App and say an Iron Man movie. Further more the difference between the both and watching Iron Man on the Netflix App. People know these differences.

What companies never been attempted, is say, by selling and engine of the Car than charge 30% of the sale of the Car, and then the Uber rides that use the Car. That has never been attempted and this is what Apple is attempting. People here use argument such as, if it wasn’t for the engine, there would be no Car, no Car no Uber rides with the Car … Apple is just protecting their IP so on and so forth. It‘s a mess, because the reason at the start is as much fallacious as it could be. There is no way to know if there was not such a particular engine there would be no Uber, or Uber like service … no way to know. What we migtht consider is that is a very competent engine for a Car.

What do we know then? It’s that the engine of the Car is useful in the context of a Car. The Car is useful in the context of ride .. and so on and so forth. Not the other way around. So there indeed more value in created context around a thing that the thing itself. Indeed digital businesses are the ones creating context for Apple technology … not taking its value … but actually adding value to it, contributing their value empowering Apple to sell even more iPhone. Apple could have the best smarphone technology on the planet, which I agree, my preference, yet without the App would be worth 0 like many other tech that never moved on … some never found context.

The reason why Apple is selling iPhones / iOS licenses like mad, is not just because it the smartphone is great, but also and in great part because YOU are creating context making it more valuable, not the other way around. If there is one that should share revenue is not YOU. In fact, digital businesses are far more valuable to Apple than Apple is to digital businesses. All this wonder around Apple iPhone achievements have brought a lot of inferiority complex with with no mapping to reality … if not for the wonder fact.



No. What is causing problems is precisely certain companies that make “engines” feel entitled to a revenue share of say the prize of winning a race with the Car using the engine. Case in case Apple have been able to market this idea very well … to the point that they argue that if they are regulated to avoid such “abuse”, people security will be in danger. It crazy, absolutely crazy. Hunger Games crazy.

Here is what I my instincts tell me. The next big thing will not come from Apple. Why? Not because I don’t find that the company does not have the resources. But the fact that I systematically have observed this pattern … leading to an eventual collapse. Now, some companies are able to turn around and reinvent themselves when that happens.

The next big thing will most probably come from another garage and we will see another huge shift in value. It may not even be digital … who knows.

Cheers.

Probably one of the better analogy for the store. And why people are going crazy over this nonsense apple is pulling.
Stores have never changed how they work. They are practically exactly the same, but for some reason we have been convinced that this “engine” must be compensated for everything any business would ever do in the car it sits in

 

[Michael Scrip]

Stores have never changed how they work. They are practically exactly the same, but for some reason we have been convinced that this “engine” must be compensated for everything any business would ever do in the car it sits in

To be fair... Apple is practically the same too.

Devs pay a $99/year membership fee... they have access to all the tools... and they can distribute all the free apps they want. Hooray!

But if those devs want to sell their apps... Apple will take 15% or 30%

And everyone seemed to like that idea.

But now some people think it's the most evil idea ever.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Stripe is 1.4% + 20p for European cards and 2.9% + 20p for non-European cards. Apple charge 3% for payment processing.

Stripe takes 1.4%+€0.25 for European cards

2.9%+ €0.25 for everything else.
To provide everything apple does.

Apple takes 27% for providing nothing at all

 

[Michael Scrip]

Apple takes 27% for providing nothing at all

Incorrect...

- we developers get up to 1 petabyte of user storage via CloudKit 100% free. Bear notes app does this and they manage 0 servers for their subscription-paid users.
- we could submit 1000 app and app updates in a year which translates to Apple paying about 1000 man-hours worth of paychecks at about $30/hr or ~$30k for app review
- we have free access to using Apple Maps instead of paying Google tons of money to use their mapping API keys (for those high volume users). this saves Yelp and Facebook a ton of money as well as small developers.
- we get many more new features every single year via the SDK compared to Android (like ARKit, Core ML, SwiftUI, Vision, etc... just to name a few).
- we get global distribution for free (including China, you know, where Google Play doesn't exist. also developers generally have to setup their own servers in China because of the great firewall, but if you used CloudKit, it just works without any extra setup).
- we get app store curated editorial with a chance to reach front page in front of 500 million customers a week.
- we have no credit card fees or international taxes to worry about
- Apple provides support to customers asking for refund for an app and app store support in general
- Testflight service is free (for public and private testing)
- app store automatically creates many different binaries of our app and distributes device-optimized versions to each customer. a 1 gigabyte app with many different permutations of versions across hundreds of servers around the world means Apple is hosting about several terabytes in the cloud for us from one single app
- push notifications/push notification sandbox servers
- Web SDK version of cloudkit/mapkit so that you can use it for a web version of your app
- Apple sign in
- Mac notarization service which improves trust by the user for downloading an app from the web
- yearly major releases of Xcode with new features
- analytics dashboard and crash reporting
- and the list goes on and on.

⬆ From a developer

 

[Sophisticatednut]

To be fair... Apple is practically the same too.

Devs pay a $99/year membership fee... they have access to all the tools... and they can distribute all the free apps they want. Hooray!

But if those devs want to sell their apps... Apple will take 15% or 30%

And everyone seemed to like that idea.

But now some people think it's the most evil idea ever.

Yea, the part you missed is the illogical ban on using other payment methods outside the store. Nobody forced apple to allow apps to be displayed for free

 

[Michael Scrip]

Yea, the part you missed is the illogical ban on using other payment methods outside the store. Nobody forced apple to allow apps to be displayed for free

Correct. Apple has never allowed another payment method.

But when they do allow other payment methods... Apple will simply subtract the 3% payment fee from their commission and their commission will be 27%

All the devs who thought they could eliminate Apple's commission will be shocked to discover that the payment fee was not the bulk of the total commission fee.

The more you know...

 

[theotherphil]

Yeah so what, I said what is missing???, what you've quoted is in the T&C's so it's not 'missing' is it. Please be extremely clear on what you are trying to point out to me because in all honesty it is not clear the point you are try to make.

You should maybe read your original post. You stated the developer fee of $99 covers everything. I posted what it covers and it specifically states that it doesn’t cover the commissions. I’m sorry that was so confusing to you.

 

[robco74]

Stripe takes 1.4%+€0.25 for European cards

2.9%+ €0.25 for everything else.
To provide everything apple does.

Apple takes 27% for providing nothing at all

You left out hosting, bandwidth, development costs to build and maintain the store, marketing. That isn't nothing. You might feel it excessive, but it isn't nothing. If Apple is providing these services, they deserve to be compensated for them. I doubt many companies will offer them for free.

Well this haven’t happened in EU we still have trans continental flights for less than 100$ or even 50$ a ticket available on a regular basis.

What economic overhead is there? Stripe for example provide everything apple does but with 90% less costs. And apple already took their part of the developers membership fee and initial commission on the sale to cover their marketing, bandwidth and hosting. Unless they want to ad some extra charge for free apps

It might be unprofitable depending how USA impact it. But apple will never abandon the store. Just as they haven’t abandoned the Mac AppStore even tho it has mostly failed.

That is indeed kind of ironic, but also a thing EU companies can’t compete with or abuse as long as they exist inside of any EU member state the taxes will always be payed to the home country. And is a major reason for the friction against us companies

They can’t compete with companies paying 0.6% in taxes. Corporate tax is 20% on average in EU. And as discovered almost all us tech companies have payed less than 1% in taxes for 20% with the double Irish loophole.

Well yes, I was speaking historically. Right now the airlines are desperate to drum up business. Pandemic and all.

The MAS actually does quite well, it isn't a failure. Some customers prefer to purchase from Apple rather than other stores. But for a lot of smaller developers, the MAS has been a good way to distribute Mac apps as well. It's also necessary now that Macs can run some iOS and iPadOS apps.

The EU's tax problems are just that, their problem. It's up to the member states and the EU to fix it. Likewise, the problems with the US tax code are for Congress to solve. But I know few companies or individuals who volunteer to pay more taxes than they owe. Apple pays what they owe, if politicians want them to pay more, they're the ones with the power to change the tax laws so they pay more.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Incorrect...



⬆ From a developer

- we developers get up to 1 petabyte of user storage via CloudKit 100% free. Bear notes app does this and they manage 0 servers for their subscription-paid users.

Included in the 99$ membership fee

- we could submit 1000 app and app updates in a year which translates to Apple paying about 1000 man-hours worth of paychecks at about $30/hr or ~$30k for app review

Average review time is less than 15min so that’s 250 man-hours still included in the membership fee

- we have free access to using Apple Maps instead of paying Google tons of money to use their mapping API keys (for those high volume users). this saves Yelp and Facebook a ton of money as well as small developers.

That’s perfectly fine to provide that for free to compete with google maps

- we get many more new features every single year via the SDK compared to Android (like ARKit, Core ML, SwiftUI, Vision, etc... just to name a few).

Also inclined in the membership fee

- we get global distribution for free (including China, you know, where Google Play doesn't exist. also developers generally have to setup their own servers in China because of the great firewall, but if you used CloudKit, it just works without any extra setup).

Considering it doesn’t cost apple to provide you with global distribution and wouldn’t cost your website anything ether irrespective if it’s in US or Europe. Perhaps google play doesn’t exist in China for the simple reason that illegal freedom apps are easier to use?

- we get app store curated editorial with a chance to reach front page in front of 500 million customers a week.

They seem to do this with payed or free apps so kind of included in the membership fee

- we have no credit card fees or international taxes to worry about

you pay a 15-30% apple fee on revenue in order to skip.
0.2-0.3 interchange fee.
An average of 22% tax rate on profits that you can use to deduct costs
And automatically applied VAT the consumer pay…
Something Apple Pay fixes for a low fee of 0% +0€ plus 0.2-0.3 interchange fees from visa/MasterCard

Or stripes fee 1.4%+€0.25 for European cards and 2.9%+ €0.25 for international ones.

Sounds like a highway robbery to me.

- Apple provides support to customers asking for refund for an app and app store support in general

Stripe and many payment solution make this easy to do. You are still responsible for any customer support not related to payment.

- Testflight service is free (for public and private testing)
- app store automatically creates many different binaries of our app and distributes device-optimized versions to each customer. a 1 gigabyte app with many different permutations of versions across hundreds of servers around the world means Apple is hosting about several terabytes in the cloud for us from one single app
- push notifications/push notification sandbox servers
- Web SDK version of cloudkit/mapkit so that you can use it for a web version of your app

Same as beforehand, still included in the membership fee.

- Apple sign in

Mandatory to use

- Mac notarization service which improves trust by the user for downloading an app from the web
- yearly major releases of Xcode with new features
- analytics dashboard and crash reporting
- and the list goes on and on.

And indeed the list goes on of things you pay only 99$ To get unrestricted access to.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

Correct. Apple has never allowed another payment method.

But when they do allow other payment methods... Apple will simply subtract the 3% payment fee from their commission and their commission will be 27%

All the devs who thought they could eliminate Apple's commission will be shocked to discover that the payment fee was not the bulk of the total commission fee.

The more you know...

Not at all what they did was remove 3% that is the max number payment methods take in EU such as stripe. Nothing said it was apples sales fee. And don’t be surprised that it will not be allowed to take the commission at all.

Nobody wants to eliminate apples commission in store. Only have an option to NOT use it for in app payments the developers chose to be responsible with. No reason that apple can’t still convince developers to pay the 15-30% premium

 

[Sophisticatednut]

You left out hosting, bandwidth, development costs to build and maintain the store, marketing. That isn't nothing. You might feel it excessive, but it isn't nothing. If Apple is providing these services, they deserve to be compensated for them. I doubt many companies will offer them for free.

Absolutely and apple is free to be payed for this. But they chose to allow free apps to exist and pay nothing. And it is excessive to take 30% of revenue outside the store when no services are used. Apple doesn’t market outside the store, they provide zero bandwidth and zero hosting on the outside.

Well yes, I was speaking historically. Right now the airlines are desperate to drum up business. Pandemic and all.

I mean we have had that since forever it hasn’t changed

The MAS actually does quite well, it isn't a failure. Some customers prefer to purchase from Apple rather than other stores. But for a lot of smaller developers, the MAS has been a good way to distribute Mac apps as well. It's also necessary now that Macs can run some iOS and iPadOS apps.

Considering apple themselves call it a failure I’d say it’s not that successful. Otherwise why no major developers want to publish on it, game developers avoid it and it’s every month fewer and fewer apps are submitted and more and more are abandoned

The EU's tax problems are just that, their problem. It's up to the member states and the EU to fix it. Likewise, the problems with the US tax code are for Congress to solve. But I know few companies or individuals who volunteer to pay more taxes than they owe. Apple pays what they owe, if politicians want them to pay more, they're the ones with the power to change the tax laws so they pay more.

Absolutely and seems to be fixed now that we have agreed to a global minimum tax rate. Otherwise it’s been incredibly hard because of bilateral tax agreements.

 

[AppliedMicro]

The airline industry is a great example. Fares go up, new airlines take off. Fares drop. The major players can often absorb the hit, but some of the smaller ones can't. They either get absorbed by competitors or go bankrupt (see Wow Air, or the US carriers Frontier and Spirit). Once the competition is reduced, fares go up again.

As it happens, I was thinking exactly of the airline industry while writing my last post.
It's indeed highly competitive and somewhat volatile - and so are prices over the short term.
Over the long term though, prices have most gone down for consumers - not up.

As for you purchasing from the developer, that's all true, however the tools used to create the app were provided by Apple, they deserve some consideration for that

? So in the same vein, is Adobe entitled to a 30% from design agencies, graphic designers, and publishers cause they provided the tools to create grapic design "products"?

I'm sure that Adobe would love to do so. In fact, I have little to no doubt that they would if they could. That is, if there were operating in a monopolistic/duopolistic market and/or if they could patent the basics concepts and algorithms for graphics editors.

 

[Sophisticatednut]

As it happens, I was thinking exactly of the airline industry while writing my last post.
It's indeed highly competitive and somewhat volatile - and so are prices over the short term.
Over the long term though, prices have most gone down for consumers - not up.

? So in the same vein, is Adobe entitled to a 30% from design agencies, graphic designers, and publishers cause they provided the tools to create grapic design "products"?

I'm sure that Adobe would love to do so. In fact, I have little to no doubt that they would if they could. That is, if there were operating in a monopolistic/duopolistic market and/or if they could patent the basics concepts and algorithms for graphics editors.

Imagine the possibility to take 30% cut on all the merchandise designed in their programs. Adobe would be the most lucrative business in the world