Yeah, that’s how it works. Maybe Tim’s replacement will be a little less aggressive and slightly more customer oriented.
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Apple's Phil Schiller Initially Opposed 27% App Store Fee on External Purchases
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He’s not going to be because they think in terms like this we made $184.10 billion in profits last year. What can you do to make it better
I detest Crooky but what else has Phil done? I'm impressed with his stance on this, I'd love to know how else he's spoken up in favour of the end user!
It's not as one-sided as you seem to imply: Apple benefits massively from third-party apps. If third-party apps didn't exist, would you still want to buy an iPhone or iPad? This is a symbiotic relationship where Apple abuses its monopolistic position; nobody is saying they should charge zero, just that the current approach is abusive because of the balance of power.
30% is cheap compared to what retail stores charged.
There have been many small devs over the years who say Apple's tools and distribution and payments make their lives easier and more rewarding than what they used to go through.
That depends on the type of store and products being sold. Some retail store margins can be very low.
Additionally, retail stores typically have to buy and maintain physical inventory and carry the risk of items not selling or having to be sold or disposed of at a loss. Inventory overhead costs are a major operating expensive retail stores have that Apple's App Store does not.
That’s not entirely true because you could use inapp purchase with Spotify at first & then when their customer base grew they removed the option & most kept subscribing then through the website
What customer focused old guard? The ones that gave cases to resolve antenna-gate?
The ones that said this is what you want without asking if I wanted it?
I have my questions about constitutionality of forbidding platforms to collect the share from the purchases on a said platform. Especially when you Do allow free apps.
But well…
But well…
Poster said charged as in past tense. App Store doesn’t have retail space overhead but it has servers, hvac, electricity, maintenance, upgrades, programming etc. how much in todays market is an jigawatt of electricity to run such a data center?
I focused on inventory because it is one of the major costs/risks retail stores have that Apple's App Store does not but retail stores obviously can also have many other costs including real estate (stores, warehouses, etc.), equipment (cash registers, shelving, cabinets, shopping carts/baskets, etc.) utilities (electricity, water, telephone, internet, etc.), advertising and marketing (print, television, radio, digital, etc.), employee wages, security systems, cleaning, office supplies, insurance, etc.
Right but the 30% is charged when you purchase something & that shouldn’t be the case it shouldn’t be as much as that
I enumerated data center costs because many are overlooked and mine wasn’t an exhaustive list. Given MR posters want to manage apples business and demand that apple kow-tow to them it’s good to remind everybody TAANSAFIL and the data centers have costs associated with their operations.
Again, it's obvious both have costs but Apple's App Store operates at such a high volume that their overhead costs relative to sales are probably way lower than the typical retail stores. Going back to the inventory factor, the App Store doesn't have to pay for inventory or risk losing money on inventory that doesn’t sell and needs to be sold or disposed of at a loss. Retail stores typically have to take on that cost and risk.
Even if Apple considerably cut its app store commissions it could still have margins as good or better than typical retail stores due to the nature of how these businesses operate but the bottom line is that comparing retail stores and app stores isn't really practical given the different business models, types of costs, the significant scalability and reach of the App Store, etc.
Thank you for mentioning me, @Reason077 . I am glad you did so because I might have never seen this thread had it not been for the notification informing that you mentioned me.
Yes, the 27% App Store fee on external purchases is indeed, as you correctly asked, "another example of Tim Crook's insatiable greed overruling the last of Apple's wiser and more customer-focused old guard".
In fact, in one sentence of the OP, it clearly states that Tim Crook was directly responsible for implementing the fee:
Steve Jobs brought out the best tendencies in Phil Schiller while keeping his worst tendencies in check, just like Jobs did with Jony Ive. After Jobs died, Schiller's worst tendencies emerged, but just like Ive, Schiller's worst tendencies tend to be limited to having bad taste in hardware design and software design. Corporate greed doesn't seem to be one of Schiller's tendencies.
As CEO, Cook has more power than the more customer-focused old guard. Cook is clueless and mediocre when it comes to hardware design and software design, and is thus reliant on a design-by-committee approach since he lacks the visionary skills of Jobs. But when it comes to financial issues, Cook is more controlling. That's because Cook's greed is insatiable. His goal is fundamentally different from Jobs's goal. Jobs's goal was to create what he believed was the most user-friendly tools to help the common man, and to balance that with making enough of a profit to continue doing that through funding ongoing R&D. Cook's goal is to make as much money as possible, by any unethical means possible, including (but not limited to) lessening user-friendliness in products, giving customers less for their money, and charging unnecessary fees.
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Whatever apples margins are either they are good for them (or bad for them). Apple still has to worry about performance, meaning how many people use their services infrastructure, even though they don’t have to worry about retail. Their fixed costs don’t go down when customers buy less services.
Apple has to take on that risk of massive data centers or paying cloud providers.
Apple shouldnt cut its margins to appease MR posters(and they won’t).
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There’s another 5 years of Tim Cook and I’m happy about it. Apple, apples customers and apples shareholders has tremendously benefited from his leadership.
Those who took issue with Tim, or apples style have already abandoned the platform and Apple is making an obscene amount of money. Peter Drucker 101.
The difference between jobs and cook is that jobs overpriced things but people didnt care. Tim prices Apple products appropriately but MR is all up in itself criticizing Apple for it.
It’s a funny thing to watch.
Microsoft tried to do that with xCloud (now Xbox cloud). Apple blocked their app repeatedly. Fortunately they've come up with a workable web app now, but that's not an ideal solution. Apple's largest app store revenue is from games, they'll do anything they think they can get away with to keep it that way.
With respect to Spotify: Apple had this thing called iTunes. It was the dominant digital media service of its time. If Apple didn't give Spotify a somewhat level playing field (still tilted toward Apple though) they would have been roasted at the anti-trust stake immediately. Apple has a specific carveout in app store rules for audio and video streaming because of this. It's not available to everyone, and they'll take a cut of every transaction the law allows them to (even more than allowed if they think they can get away with it).
There's never a surefire formula to bypass fees when Apple ultimately holds all approval authority. They've never seen income they haven't liked.
It’s not about appeasing MR posters it’s about greed because they could easily cut that to 12 to 15% & still make a profit on top but they are choosing to keep that in place