And they deploying these apps to run where again? Oh yeah, a piece of hardware engineered that somebody spent to develop, build, test, validate, certify, license, distribute, sell and support, so you as a software developer, don’t have to.
It’s deployed to run on the devices of their customers. It’s is assumed they bought the devices and licensed the OS for the digital services and apps of their choice to run. Now Apple can license the use of the SDKs to build apps. But the environment on which the app runs, the peoples devices, that is already payed for the purpose.
So that is clear correct? Because I got the impression that it were running on things that Apple owned.
On the note that somebody spends money to develop, build, test, test, validate, certify, license, distribute, sell and support so that someone else does not need to. It can also be applied to third party apps in relationship to Apple. Developers do that so that Apple does no have to. Correct? Furthermore, they don’t charge Apple for the it, Apple charges them.
The iOS market is not only developed by Apple. Case in case, if the App Store was left alone with Apple's apps and service,, the device would be little more than bricks, and in turn probably people would move out of iOS.
Why don't developers do that than as a whole to pressure Apple to change the policies?
1. Digital services, software houses in general, have no control over customers choices when it comes to devices. That control is shared between Apple and Google and enforced by the their App Store policies. Meaning a customer that you may be able to convert using your ideas, marketing efforts and product quality, (little todo with Apple or Google) use either of these devices. So the business needs to be on both otherwise it can loose customers. It’s the law of the market.
2. Secondly, it far easier for Apple not to agree with a dev and unilatefly ban it from the devices of 50% of the population than 95% of developers to leave the App Store. Its just harder to push one unit than thousands, or millions units into one direction.
3. Probably some would be sued by their customers, if not by Apple. If such thing was organized would probably be illegal. But not the other way around see?
So in the end, what happens is that this power relationship is not being balanced by the market.
Finally, you seam to be inclined to the following political position: Apple has built a device (hardware + OS) therefore if it sees fit it is entitled to a share on the revenue over anything that uses it as a component. Businesses and ideas that the company itself does not create, build, distribute or sell, just because it needs the component that the company needs to reach the devices chosen by 50% of the US population.
I find this a disturbing line of thought at many levels. Because it starts on the premisse that one should be payed for things it created which in my view is totally reasonable But than jumps on to the idea that it should should also be payed for things it does not create directly or indirectly if the first is not enough source of income. The later is quite doubtful as a practice, dodgy even, mafia uses that kind of line of thought. The only entity in a democratic society that can do that is the State for reasons that would require a lesson is the evolution on he organisation of democratic societies.
In other words, you have far more counter examples to that system of belief working extremely well than it working. Take an app, a house, a car, a brick, a chip, street, a power plant, .... you name it, are all devices invented, built, sold ... by someone. All interconnected that no device can escape. Call all this the original Operating System.
If after all Apple has done if you think the iPhone can run by itself, let alone be a successful device, think twice. There is still a lot of things left in the critical path for a device to run that Apple never built, neither has to pay for. Simple stuff as a Power Plant and then anything in between it and the moment you connect the iPhone to charge. The iPhone runs because everything in the middle is there already free to use by iPhones, Apple did not have to invent, build it.
If we applied your valuation as a basis for reasoning about anything would lead to a 30% shared revenue over all things in the critical path for the iPhone to exist like you seam to argue for apps, Apple would not have a business.
Also, you guys still thinking “monopoly”? Nobody is forcing anyone to buy an Apple product. I was never forced to buy Apple “or else!”. I would be interested to find any report from a reputable news source other than The Onion that would clearly states “Customer forced at gun point to buy an Apple iOS device”.
Well, I'mo not thinking monopolies, but in terms of FRAND, a framework that I believe that should be applied to all proprietary forms of licensing, not only IPs, exactly to block the kind of attempts to charge for things not produced, distributed or sold based on the fact that ones component is critical to ones business.
PS: As a side note the concept of monopoly is not defined based on someone having options or not.
Hopefully other justifications will come instead of juvenile god like notions over property. Has impressive as god might be.
In the law of the land there is a thing called servitude of passage. If you consider your customers as land, an abstraction, when you deploy an App that right is voided by the App Store policies. Now this concepts aren’t applied yet in the digital space world, it’s basically cowboy land. The lack of reasonability of tech companies, even between themselves may lead the adoption of certain regulations that ar used in more matured contexts, contexts with centuries of maturity.
Cheers.
