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EU Prepares to Charge Apple in Antitrust Dispute With Spotify
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What do you mean “their” devices and “their” customers? The moment Apple sold me an iPhone - it is MY device and not Apple’s. And Apple does not own me as “their customer”, nor should it have control over how I choose to use my Apple-branded devices. It is absurd to Apple to expect to extract rent on every transaction with 3rd party developers I engage in, simple because they sold me a smartphone or a tablet.
It's part of doing business as a giant company.
Any fines or lawsuits are just chump change to them. They could totally break the law and write a $50 million check like it was toilet paper.
Do you care how much supermarkets charge the manufacturers of products for slotting fees? Or do you care what you pay at the register for a product you want? It's the same for the fees on iap transactions. It's the end price that matters to "most" consumers (I would think)
Nobody is stopping you from doing what you want with your iphone. However, if you decide to activate the iphone with IOS, you are bound by the t&c therein. You can choose not to opt-in to the ios ecosystem if you do not like the product, or the nuances in the ecosystem,etc.
Or lobby against them, or just not support the App Store in those jurisdictions.
They should leave the first country that mandates this. See what the public’s reaction is.
Curious what you did not like.
I don’t think you understand how laws and court rulings work. If EU decrees that Apple is in violation of anti-trust - they will have to change their business practices, or be barred from doing business in EU. No, they won’t be able to just write a $50M check and continue doing business like before.
None of this has got anything to do with Apple being charged for breaching competition rules.
You are free to signup on the Spotify website and Apple get NOTHING. Same as Netflix
But if you sign up and subscribe via the in-app signup (which you otherwise would not have seen). Apple deserve their cut.
Ahh, again with old and tired "supermarket" analogy, which holds no water here. We have dozens and dozens of supermarket chains which compete against each other.. And goods manufacturers can choose not to do business with any given supermarket and sell directly to consumers.
Apple/Google are a part of a duopoly which controls access to billions of devices we depend on in our daily lives.
And yes, consumers should care when companies conduct anti-competitive practices and unfairly leverage their marketplace positions. This is why we have anti-trust laws.
Annoying app behavior rules that often don't have anything to do with user experience and aren't applied consistently at all. Some are unwritten. The least consistently applied rules have to do processing payments and similarity to other apps. You really don't know if they'll accept your app until after you've built the entire thing. Also, lack of choice for tooling, and Apple's own tooling is bad. Xcode is the worst IDE I've used since Eclipse, and their GUI APIs suck unless you use React Native and skip all that.
Excessive censorship too, but that didn't affect me personally. I can understand them having rules about speech, but they went overboard and did a lot of witch-hunting against other devs. Like when they took down a Civil War game because, of course, the Confederate side in it has a Confederate flag in its historical context.
All things considered, I'd rather develop apps for web.
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Why - It's no different to an advertising fee and should be shouldered by the dev.
Currently the developer has a seamless in-app signup / purchase. Its only fair that that gets removed. If they are only willing to pay 0% that's exactly how much free lead generation they should get from any Apple service.
Links offsite should be treated no different - its lead generation, and in any business you pay a hefty fee for it.
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So you think it's reasonable for Apple to prevent Spotify and Netflix to include a simple text in their app, instructing a new customer to go to their website and sign up for the service? Because that's what Apple is doing.. in the same breath claiming they they are aiming to create the best user experience. It's just greed and malice, nothing else.
You agreed when you bought it. They aren't just selling you a piece of hardware.
It's reasonable, and Apple is unreasonable, but it should be legal for them to do what they want.
Like I said, I hate their dev ecosystem and left it myself. Get an Android phone.
Whether I "agreed" to EULA is irrelevant, especially if the EULA itself is based on illegal foundation. This is what the courts will determine.
If you apply the bogus "Apple is a monopoly" reasoning to Spotify: Many non-general-use devices can only play music from Spotify, nowhere else, since they grabbed that market early on. And Spotify does what they want with their platform, including negotiating royalties. Musicians have little choice but to distribute their music on Spotify.
If it becomes politically expedient to charge them for this one day, it'll happen. Actually might already be happening.
Nope, they cannot just "do what they want". We have anti-trust laws and consumer protections - the court will decide whether what Apple is doing is permissible under those laws.
It's only "tired" because it's a great analogy.
And it's only anti-competitive if found to be anti-competitive. In this case I believe Apple will walk away without a scratch, but of course there are those who hope that Apple will get a broken leg. Either way it's out of our hands. An MR forum poster postulating that a company is behaving anti-competitively is just an opinion.
How are they walking away without a scratch? They're already being fined.
That's barely a scratch that doesn't even require a band-aid, but yeah they've been fined for various things in various countries looking for a money-grab.
I was already nuanced above and in the other threads about the EU doing its usual thing. I'm not going to repeat myself, but that's the tl;dr, the protections are stupid and short-sighted.
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I would assume the fine comes with a requirement to change their behavior or risk getting an even larger fine, but it doesn't say. That's what I was curious about.
Yes, if they are unwilling to pay for that privilege.
Do you have any idea how much lead generation and advertising costs companies ? And mostly its in the form of non-garunteed signups. IAP's guarantee the signup and payment.
Netflix have decided they are popular enough that IAP's do not have any added value. Spotify has decided they are a necessary evil, but don't want to pay the fees.
The only issue that I have with the Spotify situation is the potential leverage that IAP's give Spotify to negotiate lower fee's to Artists.