I'm pretty sure Apple does know you personally and couldn't care less about your $10. They are only interesed in the $10 from millions of users (not you).
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Spotify Says Apple One Bundle Will Cause 'Irreparable Harm to Developer Community'
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Spotify only think about themselves and don't think about us. it's suppose to be a competition so if you can't compete then go out of the race and don't ruin it for everyone else. if you want people to choose you then get better and cheaper. not to mention, Apple Music have more music all together than Spotify so even at the same price I chose Apple Music. apple music have way more international music too. so just because you're losing that doesn't mean you have to ruin it for everyone else too.
I'm still upset with Spotify and I will get everyone not to support Spotify since they don't play by the rule and like to attack their competitor especially apple. did all company get together and agree to attack apple or something? everyone seem to look for a way possible to attack apple for some reason. may be is a fashion to attack apple because if you don't then you don't look or sound cool! Laughing out loud it's really sad when they should improve themselves to be able to compete but instead they tried to take out those who are better than them. it's more like kids playing and jealous .
Thankfully the EU does not look kindly on monopoly. Most Americans won't notice because they benefit from European lawmaking on these fronts.
(context: I'm a developer working with all platforms)
It all comes down to: Apple One Bundle prices are not fair and Apple is using its monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over other companies.
By releasing the Apple One bundles, they're cutting every other similar app at the knees. No other developer can compete with Apple in price, because they already HAVE to give up 30% of their revenue to Apple for no other reason that to be included in the App Store. If Apple didn't require that 30% fee, then there could be an argument that the Apple One bundles are fine and just a way to save by bundling, but this isn't the case. No one else can compete with these prices. There's no justification for Apple taking a cut from subscription fees that are being provided by companies other than Apple and delivered from external servers costing Apple nothing.
Many people will see the great value in these bundles and get them, I likely will. After that, it'll be harder to justify keeping similar subscription-based apps in the same categories on their devices. Apps/services like Spotify, Dropbox, Netflix, gaming apps, news apps, etc. will lose a lot of business.
Comparisons to Amazon Prime are laughable, as Amazon doesn't operate an app ecosystem or stop others from ordering from other stores. They allow anyone to make a seller account on their amazon.com platform and don't take ridiculous fees for showing your products on the site. If you want to partner with Amazon and have them fulfill your orders for you, that's also possible, or you can keep doing it yourself if you so choose. Amazon is using their platform and infrastructure to better the lives of customers without leaving any willing online seller at a disadvantage. You could argue Amazon Prime is using its monopoly position as an online retailer to disadvantage brick-and-mortar stores, but their practices don't fall into the antitrust category as Amazon doesn't use its monopoly to undercut prices unfairly. Amazon Prices are fair, as those same prices can be offered by anyone using the Amazon.com seller platform.
Apple One Bundle prices are not fair.
I'm already paying for Apple News+ & Apple TV+ for a total of $15 / mo.
For $15 more a month, I'd get Apple Music, 2TB of iCloud, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+.
I can't justify keeping Spotify and Dropbox anymore after this, even though I think they are technically and user experience -wise superior to the Apple offerings. App & service developers will suffer because they can't compete.
That's an extra $250 / year I could use on something else.
Apple can and will aggressively market the One bundles at basically no extra cost to them and they can easily drown out all other advertising from other apps. You'll get notifications, app store features, random popups suggesting the One bundles, etc. All because they can, and no-one can stop them.
This is classic antitrust territory.
Remember 2001 United States v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)?
Or EU v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission)?
The best thing that could come out of this is for antitrust lawsuits forcing Apple to slash the developer fees down to what it actually costs them to show and distribute apps, which is pennies on the dollar compared to the costs now. i.e. fixed prices per app/MB dependent on app cost/size. App prices would go down for the end-user. There would be fair market competition again.
If Apple feels like the bundle it offers is of such high quality that customers would choose them over competitors, let the customers choose. But in order for them to do that, Apple's competitors must be able to compete on a level playing field. Right now the playing field has a 30% upward slope to the advantage of Apple.
It all comes down to: Apple One Bundle prices are not fair and Apple is using its monopoly position to gain an unfair advantage over other companies.
By releasing the Apple One bundles, they're cutting every other similar app at the knees. No other developer can compete with Apple in price, because they already HAVE to give up 30% of their revenue to Apple for no other reason that to be included in the App Store. If Apple didn't require that 30% fee, then there could be an argument that the Apple One bundles are fine and just a way to save by bundling, but this isn't the case. No one else can compete with these prices. There's no justification for Apple taking a cut from subscription fees that are being provided by companies other than Apple and delivered from external servers costing Apple nothing.
Many people will see the great value in these bundles and get them, I likely will. After that, it'll be harder to justify keeping similar subscription-based apps in the same categories on their devices. Apps/services like Spotify, Dropbox, Netflix, gaming apps, news apps, etc. will lose a lot of business.
Comparisons to Amazon Prime are laughable, as Amazon doesn't operate an app ecosystem or stop others from ordering from other stores. They allow anyone to make a seller account on their amazon.com platform and don't take ridiculous fees for showing your products on the site. If you want to partner with Amazon and have them fulfill your orders for you, that's also possible, or you can keep doing it yourself if you so choose. Amazon is using their platform and infrastructure to better the lives of customers without leaving any willing online seller at a disadvantage. You could argue Amazon Prime is using its monopoly position as an online retailer to disadvantage brick-and-mortar stores, but their practices don't fall into the antitrust category as Amazon doesn't use its monopoly to undercut prices unfairly. Amazon Prices are fair, as those same prices can be offered by anyone using the Amazon.com seller platform.
Apple One Bundle prices are not fair.
I'm already paying for Apple News+ & Apple TV+ for a total of $15 / mo.
For $15 more a month, I'd get Apple Music, 2TB of iCloud, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+.
I can't justify keeping Spotify and Dropbox anymore after this, even though I think they are technically and user experience -wise superior to the Apple offerings. App & service developers will suffer because they can't compete.
That's an extra $250 / year I could use on something else.
Apple can and will aggressively market the One bundles at basically no extra cost to them and they can easily drown out all other advertising from other apps. You'll get notifications, app store features, random popups suggesting the One bundles, etc. All because they can, and no-one can stop them.
This is classic antitrust territory.
Remember 2001 United States v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)?
Or EU v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission)?
The best thing that could come out of this is for antitrust lawsuits forcing Apple to slash the developer fees down to what it actually costs them to show and distribute apps, which is pennies on the dollar compared to the costs now. i.e. fixed prices per app/MB dependent on app cost/size. App prices would go down for the end-user. There would be fair market competition again.
If Apple feels like the bundle it offers is of such high quality that customers would choose them over competitors, let the customers choose. But in order for them to do that, Apple's competitors must be able to compete on a level playing field. Right now the playing field has a 30% upward slope to the advantage of Apple.
News: Spotify is worried Apple will cause them "irreparable harm."
Every living musician: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!
Every living musician: Bwa ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!
You can pretend to read these tea leaves any way you want, but sounds like par for the course for Spotify to me. Spotify has a history of pushing back against Apple's policies with the App Store, and specifically that premium Apple takes off of subscription fees. There's also blood in the water these days with Apple getting more scrutiny for supposed anti-competitive behavior. Any competitor to Apple is gonna want to stir the pot and hope they get regulators' interest up. But if you want to keep reading into that, nobody's stopping you.
View my posting (#405) above: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-to-developer-community.2254370/post-28909313
Pretty much all the apps listed in Apple’s bundle have alternatives where subscribers pay through external means. Nobody purchases Netflix, Spotify or Dropbox through IAP for example. So your argument that they are inconvenienced by Apple’s 30% cut is clearly incorrect which makes your entire argument about anti-trust also incorrect.
Besides, it’s legal and expected that a manufacturer has a monopoly on their own products. Apple isn’t a monopoly in any market that they operate in however. Offering better value or better products is pro-competition and forces Apple’s competitors to innovate, improve their service or increase value. You can’t merely claim ”anti-trust” whenever your competitors have a better product or improve their value! If that’s the case then Apple can sue Netflix because they are a monopoly in the market they operate, have a greater range of titles and are using their power to be pre-installed on every TV, games console, PC and media player in the last 5 years all without paying any fees to Apple. Apple can’t possibly compete when AppleTV isn’t on all those devices so it’s clearly anti-trust because some random on the internet said so.
Anti-trust cases look at harm to consumers and in the case of Apple One, it provides Apple’s customers better value and gives non-Apple customers another reason to choose their products and services.
So, Premier Apple One gives you 2 TB of storage in iCloud.
That’s nice, now, explain to me Apple, why I still can’t use the Time Machine with iCloud?
That’s nice, now, explain to me Apple, why I still can’t use the Time Machine with iCloud?
What else can Spotify do except whine?
Spotify is unable to compete on its own and is instead trying to get regulators to slow Apple down. Spotify’s inability to fund hardware initiatives, not to mention original video content efforts, and virtual fitness classes, is their own shortcoming.
Spotify is getting desperate and it shows.
Nobody purchased those services via IAP because those companies CAN'T provide it at the 30% profit loss. Don't you think companies would rather offer their customers the ability to sign up for their services straight from the app with a few simple clicks without having to so via more complicated external means? How many customers have been put off from signing up to various services because it wasn't that easy to do? Whereas with Apple's competing services they can just click a button to subscribe. Obviously customers and other companies are inconvenienced.
To answer that rhetorical question: Technically, It doesn't matter how many it in numbers, since even if it's a small number of users, it will fall under anti-trust. I don't have numbers, but I would suspects many users would rather want to subscribe to services and make purchases for content (that is not provided or owned by Apple) directly from many apps. i.e. I've been inconvenienced by the fact that I wasn't able to buy comic books on my iPad using the Comixology app because of the 30% fee Apple would take, and I've skipped over many potential spur-of-the-moment purchases because of the hassle associated with the process, so the Comixology app suffers, the comic book creators suffer, and I suffer (although my bank account sighs a relief.)
Like I posted in my original message, the US Government and the EU Commission both disagree with you:
United States v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)?
EU v. Microsoft (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Commission)?
and also, more recently the Apple batterygate scandal: https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/13/...erygate-throttling-slowdown-settlement-claims
Anti-trust laws are well explained in https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/antitrust-law.asp
"The goal of these laws is to provide an equal playing field for similar businesses that operate in a specific industry while preventing them from gaining too much power over their competition. Simply put, they stop businesses from playing dirty in order to make a profit."
(btw: You don't need to be a monopoly to break anti-trust laws. Many people just associate them with monopolies.)
In order for other companies to offer consumers an equal experience, they need to pay Apple 30% of their profits. So, obviously they can't do that, and consumers lose alternative options. That is definitely NOT pro-competition.
You can claim anti-trust whenever another company uses its monopolistic position to unfairly disadvantage others. Apple is stifling competition by price-cutting services without the possibility for anyone else to compete by matching those prices because they have to pay Apple exorbitant fees and it's unrealistic to expect them to provide their services at a loss for a long time. That is classic anti-trust.
This is not the case. The smart device manufacturers, that you say "Netflix" is using it's power to force itself on their devices, are adding Netflix of their own volition because customers would rather buy a TV with Netflix than a TV with no Netflix. Many already offer Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, etc as smart apps. They would love to offer Apple TV as a service as well. Apple won't allow them to do so, because it would eat into the profits of Apple TV boxes and other Apple hardware. Samsung would love to offer Apple TV as a service to its customers as it would just raise the market value of their TVs.
Netflix doesn't have any power to put Apple, Hulu, or anyone else in an unfair position. If Netflix lowers their prices, all the other platforms are on an equal playing field to lower theirs.
Now, if Netflix used its market position to force Samsung to NOT offer Hulu or AppleTV apps and only have Netflix as the single app on Samsung TVs, THAT would be anti-trust territory.
Another case of anti-trust is if Netflix had a war chest with enough capital to slash their prices so low for so long that others can't compete and would go out of business. This one isn't as easy to prove in court, but it's in the realm of the laws.
In any case, Netflix is not in any anti-trust position.
Apple makes its offering at the expense of other apps and platforms. I for example enjoy Dropbox as a service better than iCloud, and I would rather keep using Dropbox, but it's harder to justify it now since I have to pay extra for the pleasure. And Dropbox CAN'T drop their prices to match Apple's offering since they're already operating on a -30% loss on Apple platforms.
Apple is stifling competition and thus harming all customers across iOS and macOS devices. That is quite a substantial number of consumers harmed.
Definitely falls under anti-trust laws.
I appreciate the time you took to reply to me and I did read it all. I think you misunderstand how the anti-trust laws work and specifically the Microsoft case that you have linked to. Apple is a vertically integrated company so they are not colluding with any third party to manipulate the market which is one of the reasons this is vastly different.
For a thorough run down of the App Store from an actual legal perspective, have a look at the Hoeg Law YouTube channel where a corporate lawyer breaks it all down in the Epic vs Apple saga.
Before you keep throwing "anti-trust laws" around you'd better start by looking at cases around such incidences which might help educate yourself some more: try:
- Brooke Group Ltd. v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp (1993)
- Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc. (2007)
- Weyerhaeuser Co. v. Ross-Simmons Hardware Lumber Co. (2007)
