Not for Xbox store because that's the only successful store listed there.
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Spotify on Apple's Response to App Store Dispute: 'Every Monopolist Will Suggest They Have Done Nothing Wrong'
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No, I think the stores do because it's the holidays and they usually get 3 to 4 times normal sales and promotions like that bring more people in. They have more than enough money to offset.
Nah, Spotify are just name calling because they want to have the service for free. And on the way, they wouldn't mind trying to play the victim of those nasty people at Apple. This latter pose would play out a lot better if Spotify was not taking artists to court in order to try to pay them less, when Apple simply paid up. Sorry, guys at Spotify, you are going to have to do a lot better than that!
I agree with the arguments of Spotify but I also with agree Apple. Apple is greedy, of course absolutely they are.
At the end of the day Apple owns the app store and makes the rules. Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly in phones or any platform they own, far from it. Look to Microsoft and Google for monopolies.
At the end of the day Apple owns the app store and makes the rules. Apple certainly doesn't have a monopoly in phones or any platform they own, far from it. Look to Microsoft and Google for monopolies.
Why should big business like Spotify get the benefit of promotional cuts from Apple? If these are available, surely they should go to the little people, the startups, and so on? This is a bit like Amazon wanting a free ride
When it comes to competition, how may apps can display the current date as an app icon?
How many apps can be set as os standard for this and that? For example if siri finds a new appointment in mail?
Think, think, change your opinion, maybe!
As a user, how many of your apps do you want to have displaying the current date etc? I find that one date on my phone is more than enough, given that it is also on the watch and on the desktop. But perhaps you have a need to see the date displayed a few more times just to be sure you're getting a correct time displayed? I'm quite happy that Apple sets standards for Apps. If you prefer an alternative business model, you know what to do. Oh wait - you already are an Android user, so why this comment from you?
What is your definition of market?
Is there any other App Store than apples on the iOS market?
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You know all the free education and training for kids to programme, that they carry out at the Apple Stores? All the investment in teaching people to code? Showing little ones (and grownups) how to draw and produce videos etc on iPads? All the other free sessions at their shops. It's not hard to see that a company might take revenue from Apps and put it to pay for that sort of public service.
They could give the phones away for free, too. And there is no reason why your gym should be trying to make a profit just because they bought a bit of gear and some premises. And I am sure as hell certain that my motorbike did not cost anywhere near as much to build and ship as those appalling profiteers charged me to buy the thing.
I was interested to know where you got your 1-5% figure from. Perhaps you are an economist.
The owner of a grocery store gets to decide which products to sell, and what payment methods to use. Would you call him a monopolist?
Not when there is a bigger shopping mall on the horizon (The Google Play Store), with the 80% market share that critics like to tout so much.
Do You guys even notice cultural differences between people ? Spotify is European and acts different than an American Netflix.
That would be like if I said that brutal straight forward XY company doesn’t care a xxxx.
You call it weak and whining or whatever and think of Europe as as small country. Europe is a bigger nation with more people than the USA.
Just to point that out for You posters!
Interesting, I imagine that accounts for the reason why despite the fact that they grew 8MM subscribers last quarter, they managed to lose 7% of their revenue per user. Of the paying users, users on average pay $5.58 each. I imagine Spotify is padding their paid subscriber numbers, and banking on them becoming full-paying users. But I don’t see that doing so well. They earned $1.71B, and still managed to post a negative $88.65MM, and forecasted $1.65B for the next quarter; granted first quarters are usually slow in comparison, but is that still true for $10 services? Or is that a definitive decline?
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Remember, Spotify just had a PR disaster when they took artists to court. They have to do something to deflect attention before the effect of this starts to bite. Indeed, Spotify may have just seriously shot themselves in the foot!
3 points.
1. Though this announcement was from May 8, 2018, their current Signup Page still lists it as "starting later this year". Not sure what to make of that, and I'm not signing up to find out. It seems to me that it should have happened last year and they shouldn't still be advertising it as "later this year". Maybe it's nothing more than a missed page that should have been updated months back.
2. Games are still going at the old 30% rate. So is everything Xbox related. My guess is that they're making more from games than other applications. No point in giving up profit on your money makers. It will subsidize their loses on the other side. Just my speculation; I have no actual facts to support that. Not that it really matters much.
3. They're not doing this as a way of thanking developers. Instead it seems to be to a tactic to be relevant once again. Microsoft’s Windows Store has been struggling to attract developers for years now, and Microsoft is now radically overhauling how it takes a revenue cut from app developers. Microsoft is essentially having a sale (i.e. lowering their profits) to draw in customers (i.e. developers). As a developer myself, in today's world, I'd rather have 70% of Apple's pie than 95% of Microsoft's.
Microsoft lowering their take doesn't seem to be a good argument for Apple to do the same. The people on the top shouldn't necessarily mimic the business practices of those on the bottom. They don't need to make the same desperate moves. Not knowing Apple's costs, I don't know if 30% is fair of not. And really, "fair" will vary from person to person. But I know there are real costs associated with their services.
For the general conversation, there are two costs getting mixed up quite a bit. If you want your app(s) in the App Store, that's $99/year. Or for $299/year, you get those benefits plus the ability develop apps for your employees and distribute them to your employees only (as Google and Facebook recently learned) outside the App Store. I've seen a lot of people saying the 30% is for server costs, networking costs, distribution costs, infrastructure, etc. That's what the $99 is for. To be on the store and all the benefits that gets you.
The 30% is what they take if you get money from the customer for buying your app, in-app purchases or subscriptions (which can be less than 30%). That is their payment processing fee and pays for things like a fraud department, a customer service department, credit card processing, collecting and distributing money all around the globe (or disc if you prefer) and so on. They don't take 30% to have it in the store. They take 30% if they're handling money on your behalf. If they don't need to be the middleman in your financial transaction (like in the case of Uber/Lyft for example) they don't take 30%. It's really that simple.
I wonder if apple is giving 30% Apple Music subscription revenue to the TV and Speaker companies for users who signup using those devices... or to google if its an Android TV. I bet not.
The other issue is that it's $10 a month only for the more developed countries. In other countries, it's often less.
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide....st-9-99-everywhere-and-thats-absolutely-fine/
What I am observing that in countries with decent iPhone market share, Apple Music is gaining reasonable market share.
So we are again seeing the same paradigm play out from the iOS vs android smartphone market, where the iPhone has monopolised the bulk of the profits in the market, leaving everyone else to fight for scraps. Because Apple has aggregated the best customers (you need to have a fair amount of disposable income to be willing to purchase an iPhone, after all) who tend to come from more wealthy, developed countries, it stands to reason that Apple is slowly but surely leveraging on its iOS user base to acquire Apple Music subscribers. These are your people who are both able and willing to pay the full $10/month for said service.
This leaves mostly developing countries for Spotify, which simply isn't earning them all that much money. They recently tried to pull a stunt by launching in India despite not having acquired all the streaming rights from Sony yet, and while I recall reading that they have managed to acquire more than 1 million new users, these are mostly on the free tier and add nothing to Spotify's bottom line for the moment at least.
This is the one thing that critics who like to flaunt the comparatively higher market share of companies such as Samsung or Spotify don't seem to grasp. It's not just the number of users you have, but also the quality. And I think that this reality is also starting to set in for Spotify.
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They are welcome to try. They will achieve nothing, except lose users like myself as a source of revenue, because I am most certainly not switching to Android just for them.
I have to keep injecting this because it's getting lost in so much doom and gloom about Spotify, the fact remains another big player, Netflix, is also saying no to Apple's in-app purchases. The 30% cut is insane, I don't see how this is sustainable moving forward for any of the streaming services, even Disney's upcoming streaming service. It doesn't make any sense.
Oh and by the way, Spotify and Netflix's streaming services existed before the app store, they don't need Apple, I'd argue if all major streaming services leave Apple's app store, it's Apple and their customers that will miss out, not the other way around.
Oh and by the way, Spotify and Netflix's streaming services existed before the app store, they don't need Apple, I'd argue if all major streaming services leave Apple's app store, it's Apple and their customers that will miss out, not the other way around.
Indeed. It seems Spotify is burying itself under its own weight, when they haven’t even truly figured out a successful game plan for their existing obesity. Adding more users at any cost, for the sake of the small percentage that convert to paid, while carrying more free users just doesn’t make sense.
I think by now they are adding more users for the sake of bragging rights.
Anyway, what you said made me for the first time consider Apple to be a monopoly. Although they are not a monopoly in the greater scheme of things, they are a monopoly in the affluent demographic. That should’ve been obvious considering that they collect the majority of the profit, thus are monopolizing the market, despite not monopolizing users. *shrugs*
The same exact argument could be made by any recording artist that gets streamed on Spotify.
Drake customers on Spotify are not Spotify customers, so why should Drake have to share a cut of streaming royalties with Spotify? All the major labels get streamed on Spotify, so does that make them a monopoly too?
No, it makes them a proprietary delivery platform for music (one of a handful), just like iOS is a delivery platform for apps (also one of a handful).
Drake customers on Spotify are not Spotify customers, so why should Drake have to share a cut of streaming royalties with Spotify? All the major labels get streamed on Spotify, so does that make them a monopoly too?
No, it makes them a proprietary delivery platform for music (one of a handful), just like iOS is a delivery platform for apps (also one of a handful).
Why would Apple own them 30%? I'm honestly not sure who pays who in these situations. But I wouldn't assume Apple would necessarily own some TV manufacturer 30% just because Apple is charging people 30% to use their App Store services. You're comparing two different things. It depends on if people are loyal to the brand or if they buy based on features. Do you want to be the TV that offers JoeBob's steaming service or do you want to be the TV with all the big players already built-in and ready to go? Or to put it another way, if Company X delivers nothing but a dumb TV, do you think more people would purchase another TV from Company X or do you think more people would go for the TV that has Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. built in and ready to go? TV and speaker companies may very well be paying the other companies to develop apps for their products and licensing costs as well since they're important features these days to many customers.
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It wouldn’t be sustainable, Microsoft’s approach makes sense. That aside, if the streaming services left the App Store, they’d lose the bulk of their paying customers. So as far as their investors are concerned, they need Apple.
Again, it's 15% after the first year, and this only applies to new accounts. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Netflix actually managed to negotiate paying just 15% for its first year, so that's that.
So existing Netflix users paying via iTunes still afford Apple its cut. Which as it turns out, is "just" $110 million a year, or 0.3% of Apple's services revenue. Might be a significant amount for Netflix, but negligible for Apple.
Also, the thing with Disney is that it doesn't need its streaming service to be profitable right away, as it clearly has the resources to keep sustaining it forever.
As for Netflix, I foresee that they will eventually have to increase their prices until it starts to mirror that of traditional cable. As it is, Netflix isn't profitable either (they have taken on an extraordinary amount of debt), and has been able to grow due to a noticeable lack of competition thus far. With Apple, Disney and ATnT set to enter the market soon, the real battle is only just beginning.
I see no point in that. What these services would most likely do is prevent users from paying within their iOS devices, and instead have to manually navigate to their respective websites to register and make payment. A little more inconvenient at the start, but it's a one-off thing which doesn't really mean all that much in the long run. But the first step is always the hardest.
That said, I can see Apple's rationale for wanting to offer their own competing service as well, to act as a hedge in the event that companies like Netflix do try to pull a stunt like this and withhold their services from the Apple platform in an attempt to hold the company hostage.
I think Spotify are quite popular in Europe? However I think the problem they have is the free steaming tier. Most people would rather put up with some adverts and get it for free. If they removed the free tier I think it would force a lot of users to pay for the premium.
Netflix wouldn’t shoot themselves in the foot like that. They aren’t going to throw away millions of customers just to spite Apple. Also even if such a thing happened there are other ways round it rather than switching to android. I have a fire tv stick which was bought as a gift which I don’t use. I’d simply use that to watch Netflix. Many people have pcs they could use or even pay £30 for a fire stick which would be a lot cheaper than changing ecosystem.