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U.S. Developers Can Now Offer Non-App Store Purchasing Option, But Apple Will Still Collect Commissions
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I'm sure most of your purchases online don't go thru Apple. Amazon, for example, you buy stuff on the app using your credit card, Apple isn't involved. Same with Uber etc etc ..
That’s not it. Concrete example: The Kindle app is not allowed to sell you Kindle books without 30% commission for Apple. However, you can go to the Amazon website and buy Kindle books without commission, which then appear in your Kindle app. But the Kindle app isn’t allowed to link to the Amazon website, and isn’t even allowed to tell you about it, as long as the website doesn’t collect commission for Apple. You have to think of visiting the Amazon website yourself.
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Hosting, development of the frameworks and APIs that apps use, technical support for developers, tools (Xcode, etc). They're not providing absolutely nothing. Whether that's worth the fee they're charging is a different question.
They could go the "fair" route and everyone pays for exactly what they use. Everyone gets a monthly bill for hosting, bandwidth (paid per gigabyte), and a licensing fee for whatever Apple frameworks you use.
What‘s so funny about those comments is IAP only applies to digital goods. I guess they don’t buy anything else online or via an app? Do they not shop Target or Amazon or Walmart online?
Right and the majority of apps in the App Store are free to download and you don‘t pay a cent if you don’t buy anything in-app. Do those developers/apps not use all the things you mention above?
The Apple part isn’t completely accurate. It’s 30% only when the business has app store revenue over $1 million; under $1M and it’s 15%.
The proper way to state it would be 3-point or 3 percentage-point difference.
Just typical Apple greed. 30% is extortion and if they had done it 5% then nobody would have challenged it. Apple have billions sitting there so this isn’t about trying to make a company profitable, it’s just greed. I think I’m going to eventually go back to Linux and Android for my phone and computer as Apple are just taking the piss.
What I don't get is why Apple feels they're at all entitled to a percentage of a transaction that doesn't even happen through them.
This is unmitigated greed on their part and I hope it's challenged.
This is unmitigated greed on their part and I hope it's challenged.
Lol
This is seriously hilarious
This is seriously hilarious
The amount of gall on Apple's part is just ludicrous.
It's basically "We're not processing the transaction but we still want 29% because we're Apple and you should be lucky to be on our platform." Seriously they need to be slapped down hard already. Hopefully they use this against Apple if they get the anti-trust stuff going.
This was indeed litigated and Apple’s right to charge a commission was found to be legitimate.
Because they think if it’s on the App Store they’re responsible for any money you make from it. If Apple knew ridsharing would be come a thing when they introduced IAP I guarantee you they’d be taking a cut of every Uber and Lyft transaction. Heck Eddy Cue said Uber wouldn’t exist if not for iOS.
Yeah that’s why I couldn’t get the logic behind the person’s argument since most of our online purchases in general are made outside the IAP process. Even on the official Amazon iOS app I think you could buy for example a Windows license key or a game (digital download) without paying Apple a dime.
Apple will make money in one way or another.
Uber makes much more than that and they don't pay the apple tax
Exactly. The annual fee has stayed the same for 16 years almost certainly because the cut Apple takes subsidizes the rest.
"Be careful what you wish for" is what I would say if the commissions go away. Paying for bandwidth alone is going to add up very quickly for some apps.
This actually might not be in compliance with the judge’s injunction order, should be interesting to see further litigation on the courts order: "[Apple is] restrained and enjoined from prohibiting developers from including in their apps and their metadata buttons, external links, or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms, in addition to In-App Purchasing”. For example, the judges order appears to be plural “links”, so one link may be insufficient. An entitlement requiring Apple approval may also be viewed as “restrain”ing developers from listing a “external” weblinks to a website payment. Should be interesting to see what comes out of this in the future.
There's a high likelihood these entitlements are tied to anonymized user or device IDs that could be traced back through user journey. It wouldn't be that tough to do with the right analytics events/properties and production data pipelines. Slap a new line in each providers Terms and it's likely good to go. "Required business purposes," is usually a get out of jail free card.
But it is an overreach imho. The part I'm interested in most is the motivation. Tighter grips usually means the bucket is leaking like a sieve in my experience with SaaS providers.
This company is so anti-consumer it's ridiculous.
That’s the main problem. The AppStore is no longer the place it used to be in 2008. If devs don’t market their apps (which costs a lot) then they’ll barely get installs. So in reality is more like your small dev is paying a pretty penny to advertise their app outside of the AppStore only for Apple to collect those absurd fees