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U.S. App Store Ecosystem Facilitated $406 Billion in Sales in 2024, Up From $142 Billion in 2019
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OL, I was going to say the same thing about you two! Honestly. Because that is all it has been, and the dogged way you continue lol. I'm out. I'm not political like that.
- If McDonald's and KFC had a duopoly for sales of soft drinks and...
- if McDonald's' and KFC's customer paid hundreds of dollars as entry fee to their respective restaurants every 2-3 years and...
- If switching from McDonald's to KFC or vice versa had the same costs/barriers (customer lock-in)...
Not that I would personally care.
But given how popular soft drinks are with consumers, I'm all for consumer choice.
Do you still believe soft drinks are a very fitting analogy?
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Yeah, but Apple has had the same app store policy since the beginning, when there were so many diffrent options to choose from, when the iPhone had no marketshare. It's not Apple abusing its market position, it's that consumers chose the phones that they want. The free market decided which phones survived.
We would all be rocking Sybian phones if consumers wanted that.
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You can't have a monopoly on your own product; you own it. You have to look at markets; iOS is not a market; smartphones are a market.
They’re even less reliable than GenAI… which is to say not at all. The accuracy is even worse if the text was edited, which anyone with any sense will do rather than using the word vomit directly.
And this has been the whole point of the “apple tax” from the start.
Without that, what incentive is there for apple to do all the work, verifying, listing etc.. someone’s free app that has 20 downloads?
The vast majority of apps don’t pay anything to apple. But epic dont talk about that.
It’s the same issue with taxation in general. The rich don’t want to pay any tax and expect the poor to shoulder the burden of the whole economy.
Epic got poor people upset that epic isn’t even richer of the App Store.. how crazy is that?
It does seem like the best deal for developers is for them to be able to stay within the app store (where they benefit from having ready access to the 1+ billion strong user base that Apple has so painstakingly aggregated), while being able to keep 100% of app revenue by utilising third party payment options that eschew Apple's 30% cut.
And of course all this comes at the expense of Apple's bottom line, and I guess it's easy to say that Apple can and should just subsidise all this out of their own pocket since they are already making so much money. No credit is given for the role Apple plays in growing the pie for developers, how they have created a trusted marketplace which makes consumers more open to purchasing and downloading apps, or how the lower propensity for piracy helps in boosting app sales overall. Or the convenience for consumers in the form of centralised payments.
Won't it be ironic if some day in the future, consumers start reminiscing about the "good old days" where they didn't need to manage multiple app stores or payment systems in order to get all their apps. People often don't realise how good they had it until they lose it.
I do feel that by and large, not much will change for Apple. When it comes to freemium apps, even the slightest bit of friction can result in a ton of lost sales as that added step leads to consumers rethinking their decision to buy extra game credits. These developers will have to decide whether 100% of a smaller percentage of sales is worth it compared to 70% of a larger proportion of IAPs.
Tim Sweeney should be aware of this better than anyone else.
Second, a payment option like Stripe does apparently have a fixed component to their commission (3.4% + $0.50 per transaction). If your app is relatively inexpensive, using Stripe may not really save you anything compared to simply using iTunes (particularly if you already qualify for Apple's small developer programme). I am not sure if there is any extra administrative overhead as well compared to going with iTunes (maybe there's zero with Stripe, the company handles all the backend for you and I am simply wrong here).
When all is said and done, Apple is probably looking at the loss of a few billion dollars of App Store revenue. Not exactly couch change, but it won't break the bank either. At the same time, I am not really seeing how any of this benefits or empowers small developers. But I guess if people are that invested in making sure that Epic keeps 100% of Fortnite revenue, or for Spotify to make more money while continuing to underpay musicians, good for them too, I guess.
iOS applications do not run on and are not sold for other platforms.
(Although a developer may offer applications with similar name/UI for other platforms, or share some of the development resources between them).
Also, consumers on the market for iOS applications are (usually) not in the market for non-iOS smartphone applications and vice versa. iPhone owners keep to the subset of iOS applications, which I why that should be considered a separate market.
You're confusing compiling applications for certain platforms. There is software out there that you can use to build your apps by pressing a button for multiple platforms at the same time, but the code is essentially the same.
Essentially but not completely (let alone non-code assets like graphics).
The same machine can be used to produce different products from the same components or ingredients.
It’s not as if an iOS application could run on Android - or vice versa.
Although maybe governments should work on legislation that allows for (requires) such cross-platform portability of apps? 🤔
You are coming off as not understanding how development works. It's called software middleware; the code is the same, and the middleware handles the differences for each OS/platform.
So Apple are trying to take credit for products I buy using the app. That is ridiculous, without the app I would have still purchased those products in another way.
Data they mine from Chrome? Google surely make billions on ads. But Chrome for 99% of time dont sent your browsing habits to Google just for tracking. That is done via website and DoubleClicks.
There is a different between Chrome and Google.
Ah, so it’s a “made up quote” that, based on his other statements and actions, totally tracks as something he would say and agree with. Got it. My apologies to Herr Schwab.
The difference is handled somewhere. It doesn’t matter.
Distributable .ipa do not run on Android.
Consumers buy either iOS applications or Android applications - and what they bought won’t run on the other platform.
Not what I said.
There’s a difference between
- “let’s target only (the five) U.S. companies”
- “there’s biggest gatekeepers unquestionably need to be covered. And we don’t need to include a European company for the only purpose of placating the Americans / credibly denying any bias”
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This would be appealing, but play that out and it gets to a dark stale place. That would be the government picking technologies. The chips, OSes, and connectivity we have now are fine, but we don’t know the future technology that might eliminate. If you roll back the clock far enough we might be stuck on PowerPC or x86.
Cross compatibility of apps should be a challenge for the market to solve.
He has no understanding of hardware, software or OSs.
Edit: And the market has long figured out compaitility between these things. For example, Office runs on all platforms. These have these things called frameworks and middleware.
Exactly the same with smartphones. You can change your supplier. You want the Wall Street journal. Well you ca get it kn iOS, android, the web, email summaries etc.
This is just words being thrown around. There has been no finding anywhere of this and yet it’s been repeated so often it’s a meme.
Apple has a monopoly with its products and services. Just like every manufacturer.
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