For those who defend Apple whatever they do, what is your red line that Apple should not overstep?
So add fee of higher than 30% is fine?
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Judge Says Apple Has Until December 9 to Make App Store Change Letting Developers Link to Alternate Payment Methods
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Agreed, I won't be using their payment systems.
Americans love the trigger words without understanding how anything works...All knowledge in the world in the country and we're still as ignorant as if we don't have any of it.
Most people making productivity apps are small-time developers who would benefit from a reduction in commission rate (like say, Fantastical or Apollo).
Freemium game companies are usually huge multimillion dollar entities. Apple is never going to give up App Store revenue altogether, and on a fundamental level, I do believe that Apple is entitled to at least something, but here at least, the burden can be shifted to those who can best bear it.
And given the predatory nature of such games, Apple could charge them 50% and I wouldn’t shed a tear. It’s like taxation in a sense. We all agree it’s important, nobody wants to pay it, but someone ultimately has to.
That's a blast from the past.
You haven't been able to sign up for paid Spotify in the app for years.
About 0.5% of Spotify's iOS users payments goes trough Apple because years back Spotify briefly tried using in app purchase for signups because they were still small and had trouble finding new customers outside the app store.
But they don't even make enough money to pay the artists, so some of the money going to Apple was not sustainable.
Eventually they became well known enough to not need Apple so much for access to new customers, but of course they still would like to use Apple's services for free, sort-of the same way they treat the artists.
I absolutely did not misunderstand. As I said, *developers* now have the choice. I as a customer do not. Developers will decide this for me and while some developers may be offering both, I bet many will fully move away from Apple's system because it is expensive. And I understand that. They want to make money and they deserve making money.
Still, I as a customer am getting screwed by this since now I will have to give out my payment information to various third party developers if I want to keep using their apps.
It is an option. E.g. Spotify already isn't using Apple's payment system (which is why you can't sign up for it in the app) and now they will be able to link to their website for payment. Any app can do this now.
True "in-app" purchases won't work without Apple's system so that's something.
And you think simply not being able to sign up at all from the app is better than linking to a sign-up page?
What, the ruling is they still have to accept Apple as a payment but also can also provide their own 3rd party link? Not just their own payment portal?
But that’s not what’s happening. You now get the option for a different payment method in addition to Apple’s. Devs get the option to include a link to an alternative method, and you get the option to use that or stick with Apple’s.
That’s my understanding of it. Maybe I’ve totally misunderstood but I think this means devs can now provide a link to their own payment portal alongside Apple’s payment option, not instead of it.
Exactly. Developers get the option to drop Apple's system. And I as a customer do not have a choice if they do so.
As I said, I suspect some will keep both because it is more convenient for customers but they aren't forced to. They can just use their own payment system and nothing else.
I feel like you’re misreading what I wrote on purpose.
I’m saying they don’t get a choice to remove Apple’s payment option. They get to also add a link to their own, but not to remove the existing payment option.
I actually had your point of view h til about 5 mins ago.
Imagine you go down to your local village market with all those stalls. Apple controls the market. Everyone pays rent to set their stall up.
What apple is saying, they should be in charge of your profits. They should set the price. Once I thought that- it actually seems kind of barbaric- and you realise the app store has been operational for years now, apples taking would be pure profit comparatively with the costs of say, updating the store with apps and running the servers.
By all means charge the rent but don’t act like you should be in charge of developers profits. And the security argument is funny. It’s a iOS. It’s payments. It will be fine.
If you think that major developers are going to give you the option of an Apple embedded payment when they can instead get your credit card in their system, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Sure, small devs who don’t want to build a whole payment system may stay with Apple’s more convenient system but even they might go to a more financially favourable third party processor. I bet many of those will pop up now and the App Store is about to get more chaotic with your credit card and personal details scattered all over multiple devs.
You might say that you’ll choose to not give them business but this affects the entire ecosystem and eventually you’ll feel its effects whether you use third party processors or not.
If you can pay for it now with Apple’s payment option, that isn’t going to change. This only allows devs to add a hyperlink to their own payment portal alongside that payment option.
Crisis averted.
The App Store is enormous, processing payment transactions is a tiny part of what it does. It's a world wide operation in >40 languages. Thousands of apps are submitted per day.
12% is a guestimate I made once based on the 2019 financials (or maybe it was 2018).
Lets see if I can do the same for more current numbers.
According to CNN, 2020 App Store revenue was $64B. Apple's take is about 28% ( 30% for the big bucks developers, 15% for the rest ).
So, Apple got about $18B from that.
Gross margin for services for Apple in 2020 was 70%.
That is higher than most years because people were spending more because of lockdowns and such.
It's a pretty normal percentage for services, Microsoft for example, being a services company gets about the same for all of their revenue.
So $18B * 30% = $5.4B is what Apple needs to run the App Store.
$5.4B is about 8.4% of $64B.
So Apple would need about that to break even.
Except that the 70% is gross margin for all of services. I'd guess that it would be lower than that for the app store because it is more work, by more expensive people, than the other parts of services.
So, 8.4% is probably too low and more is needed for the app store to break even.
Remember that about 85% of apps are free and contribute nothing.
Each paid app has to support 6 or so free apps.
Also, by Apple's reckoning, their take on the whole "App Store Economy" is just 3% or so, 30% of 10%.
Because just 10% of the "App Store Economy" goes through Apple. The rest is Netflix, Uber, meal delivery apps, etc.
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In theory, sure it just gives more choice to the user and you will still have the choice to keep paying using Apple, but in reality, all they're gonna do is moving their current pricing plan to their own payment system, and charge their price + 30% if you prefer using Apple's payment system.
Have fun storing your card info on 20 different locations.
Have fun storing your card info on 20 different locations.
Why do you think that? Why do you think developers that are currently using Apple's payment system won't drop it?
Because there’s nothing to suggest that dropping it is an option if they want to link to their payment method.
This ruling is literally the proof that it is an option.
Everybody is already allowed to not use Apple's system right now (see Spotify, Netflix, ...).
Everybody will be allowed to link to external payment sites in the future.
The direct conclusion: Everyone will be allowed to not use Apple's system and link to their own system instead.
What is so hard to understand about this? Just because they use Apple's system now doesn't mean they are somehow forced to keep it.