Furthermore, you and others like to claim that devs are using Apple's IP without paying for it, but why should they pay for something Apple already sold to a customer? IMO Evans and others want to give up on personal property rights and make sure only corporations have any property rights. Individuals aren't allowed to buy things anymore, instead we only license them.
I go back to the Nintendo Switch. I understand many of you will attempt to distinguish between iOS being a "core computing platform" and the Switch being "an optional game console with little impact on the workings of society", but they both work in the same way.
It was Nintendo who pioneered the idea of charging 30%, not Apple. I paid for my Switch, and can only purchase games via their online store, and I am going to out out on a limb and assume that there's really no way of circumventing Nintendo's 30% cut on all apps sold. I haven't really tried, because honestly, from a consumer's POV, I don't really care about a 30% or 15% cut that I am never going to see (it's the developer paying this to Apple / Nintendo / Sony / Steam, not me).
Bad actors like Spotify, Epic, Facebook, Match...they are not the good guys in this story.
This is all beside the point, Apple wants a cut of each transaction and they want to call this an IP license but this fails as an IP payment because it misses soooooo many apps. It misses advertising monetized apps, it misses apps that never do link out. Apple has granted a weird exemption for apps that sell physical goods and services even though they use just as many of the APIs and just as much of Apple's IP to earn a living as any other dev.
I wonder if, in some alternate reality, Apple decided to go with the core technology fee instead of a flat 30% fee. Perhaps that might be better for paid / subscription apps, but it would absolutely decimate free apps.
Apple's logic here makes sense from a certain perspective. First, this lowers the barriers to entry (Apple makes money only when developers make money), meaning more developers are incentivised to release apps for the App Store.
Second, there really is no way Apple can ascertain how much ad revenue apps bring in. Like it or not, iTunes does serve a very practical purpose in streamline the entire payment process, as well as working out how much money to pay to developers.
Third, I can see why Apple makes the distinction between physical and digital goods (and I know many people here would disagree with me). Physical goods (like booking an Uber or ordering food online) have high costs involved, while digital goods are often characterised by high fixed costs and low / zero marginal costs. So taxing the latter makes more financial sense than the former. It's more sustainable at least. Something like IAPs in Fortnite cost the developer nothing, and the assets have already been designed. You are literally just paying to flick a switch from "off" to "on".
Frankly speaking, it's an open secret that the bulk of revenue from the iOS App Store comes from freemium games, and I really hold little sympathy for Apple taxing the likes of Fortnite, Diablo Immortal or Clash of Clans, given the predatory nature of these games. Perhaps Apple could make an exception here. Continue to tax games while making an exception for everything else. The money brought in for the latter is probably a rounding error to Apple anyways.
Apple is a monopoly in all the ways that matter (if a dev wants to sell to all possible customers they absolutely have no choice but to sell on iOS). This means that they are almost certainly going to charge for their IP in a FRAND-ish way. Which means they won't be able to single out apps that only offer digital services to pay for everything. They will have to target all apps more evenly. The problem with targeting everyone is that suddenly Apple's platform is a lot less appealing.
And it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It's debatable that Apple doesn't deserve 30% for what the App Store offers (this appears to be an industry standard). What's harder to defend is that Apple doesn't deserve anything for the role the App Store has played in growing the overall pie for developers, as well as incentivising consumers to trust the download process and buy more apps than they otherwise would have. Or that Apple should be expected to subsidise the cost of operating the App Store via hardware profits.
I have no answer to this, but I agree with Ben Thompson's take that you can't just unilaterally take away Apple's property rights and declare that it's worthless. Let's see how the appeal goes. Either way, this matter is far from over, and we are no closer to seeing Fortnite being allowed back in the App Store (though maybe I just jinxed things by saying this). 😛
