Considering how many for profit companies just reinvest profit into growth rather than pay dividends, it is kind of a strange "difference".
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Proton Sues Apple Over 'Artificial and Arbitrary' App Store Fees
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I think he would have made changes to the App Store so things like the DMA would never have happened.
I have no idea how that answers my question. Rainbows and unicorns.
Except that's not a legal answer. In the jurisdiction that we are discussing (US), the judge in the Epic case ruled that Apple wasn't violating any state or federal antitrust laws. That decision was confirmed on appeal.
But you're begging the question here. You're assuming that controlling access to your own platform is anticompetitive to justify finding that it violates antitrust laws which makes it anticompetitive. In the US, if you have legitimate business justifications for actions that may be exclusionary, the court has to consider whether the company's success is related to the business justification or simply from excluding competition.
Which gets back to the question. Ignoring Apple's market power, why should there be competition to sell access to Apple’s platform? Seems like it's perfectly legitimate business decision to control access to your own platform.
Address the issues directly. Commissions unfair? Set commission limits. Apple not approving certain types of apps? Set up a group to override Apple's decisions for types of apps allowed. Apple having a competitive advantage in certain markets (like music) because of its fees? Limit commissions further when Apple offers a competing app.
There are ways to address the vast majority of the market issues without breaking Apple's immensely successful model.
As an aside, the number one change I'd like to see Apple make to improve the App Store is to have branded curation of the App Store. I'd love for Apple to recruit various companies to create curated sections of the App Store that organize and review a subset of apps to appeal to different groups. I think it would be huge for discovery.
Should have done it a full decade+ ago and they'd likely not be in any of this legal & regulatory hot water.
It was a huge miscalculation from Tim.
Why does Apple deserve 30% of Proton’s revenues but not Uber?
"Because one is offering a physical real world service and the other is offering a digital service."
An argument which makes exactly zero sense.
Yeah and i would have watched the shareholders scorching him on the pyre. 🤣 🍿
Steve is literally the only person on planet Earth who I think who could have pulled it off and not immediately been fired by the board. (And I don't think he would have actually done it, just threatened to to extract concessions)
Shareholders don’t profit only from dividends, but also from stocks going up. On average you often profit more from the latter than from the former. Technically stocks are valued by the sum of all expected future dividends, but in reality the market isn’t quite that rational.
In any case, the difference is that nonprofits aren’t beholden to shareholders’ private interests, but only to the company’s mission. In the US, NPOs have to operate for the public good, but there is also NFPOs (not-for-profit organizations) which don’t.
What percentage of your app related revenue to you spend on things covered by the App Store?
Exactly who uses Proton mail? If they interfaced with Apple mail I would’ve switched a long time ago. I hate spam and my email provider isn’t doing a damm thing about it.
Yeah, and then who will do QA on what gets posted to the store? I think 30% is too high but no one wants to admit that Apple does do some QA and that adds some value.
Unlike Epic, I actually use Proton everyday (Mail, VPN) and I generally trust them as a company. I have to agree with them here. I dont know if they have any real chance to win the lawsuit but I can say as a person who has used their services for some time now, this is a generally good company
Except we’ve had alt stores available on android for more than a decade and the vast, vast majority didn’t care.
I use an S25 Edge and I among many “Samsung users” do care. For full functionality I need the Galaxy Store and the Play Store. Other Android OEMs have OEM alt stores that are needed.
Now the other alt stores like F-Droid, I like but do not need.
Not sure which “alt stores” you are referencing.
You're looking at it at the wrong way. If you can walk into a website, I'd love to know how you to that. I guess Tron is reality for some.
How is Apple the only single store being the option? I can go to Disney+ on their website and subscribe. Like someone mentioned before, Safari exists. Apple isn't taking anything for that.
I recently picked up a Pixel 9, and downloaded Disney+ from the Play store.. How's Apple involved there?
There are more options than Apple to subscribe to Proton.
Not exactly….
“
No, original Proton Mail subscribers did not have to go through iOS to subscribe.
Here's why:
- Direct Subscription through Website: When the Proton Mail iOS app was first released in 2016, Apple did not require apps to use their in-app payment system. This allowed users to subscribe to premium Proton Mail services directly through Proton's website.
- Crowdfunding and Invitation Only: Proton Mail initially received funding through a crowdfunding campaign and offered early access by invitation only. It was later opened to the public in 2016.
- Early Subscription Methods: In the early days, Proton Mail was funded by donations and subscriptions were primarily managed through the Proton website.
”
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Historically we had slaves, 'for decades'....
and your point is that fees and commissions are still charged on software distribution.
ah Yes...
thats exactly my point ????.....
"so you don’t get held hostage to paying the fees?"... Yes, because that shouldn't be considered a bad thing...
In 17 years of App Store operation, there was only one outage I could recall that caused some loss by app developers.
In 17 years, we've had more MAJOR outages by AWS.
Apple uses a mix of their own infrastructure and cloud providers. So if one cloud provider goes down, App Store is still running.
Hosting your own app on AWS would have resulted in more downtime than letting Apple handle it.
100% false. Apple setup agreements with China so you literally have access to #1 smartphone market in the world without setting up special infrastructure. Even Apple Maps works in China which is free for developers and users to use.
Had you setup your own distribution, you'd need a minimum a Chinese phone number to sign up for China cloud services. There's no way you can argue that it's more efficient and better economics of scale by deploying your own app yourself.
Amazon doesn't have the market concentration? They have 40% of the market. Kindle ereader has 72% of market. Alexa has 67% of the market.
Amazon doesn't have barriers for consumers to switch? Amazon prime? Free same/Next day shipping infrastructure all over the country? Amazon photos/music/gaming/Alexa all work with Amazon prime?
Tell me again why aren't you advocating for regulation on Amazon but are so focused on Apple when literally Amazon is doing the same thing.
Also Apple/Google makes it pretty easy to switch in and out of iPhone
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