UK house builders make more than 30% per house. So they need to be targeted as well by this flawed logic.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
UK Class Action Accuses Apple of Breaking Competition Law by Overcharging for Apps
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Which led to Amazon cornering the market and prices going up for everyone. Except authors got less.
Don’t think that such ability is at stake here. You may still opt for say App Store only payments even if others might offer their customers more options
Well UK house builder actually built something to sell and sold it. In what way have say Apple built say Netflix or any third party app?
If you buy an iPhone without knowing the details about the whole walled garden App Store thing and find later on that it's not for you, no one is forcing you to stay with the iPhone and it's marketplace. You can switch to Samesung or other phone vendors any time. I hear there are even tools to migrate your stuff.
Should be easy to find out:
Subscription commissions drop from 30% to 15% after a year, but I think that is not passed on to the consumers.
Apple reduced the commission for developers with <1M revenue to 15%, but app prices remained the same mostly.
The question isn't whether it would "survive", but whether it would continue to ensure the same level of security and quality that Apple wants to provide.
(Also, you can bet if Apple were inventing the Mac today, they'd lock things down just the same as they do on iOS.)
Don't they have in house council for this kind of stuff?
It's not the first year Apple is involved in law suits.
It’s irrelevant to the case. The case is about abusively charging customers infinitely and indefinitely for the ability to install and update apps in their smartphones and tablets. Which by industry standards is close to 0 actually considering it’s included in the OS license. Not the ability for developer to charge their customer for the apps and services their deliver.
Last edited:
And that does not make sense at all, because Apple does not charge the user for it.
The cut Apple gets depends on the price the developer sets.
If the app is free, Apple does not charge anything.
If you think that cost is not included in the end price you must be living in the la la business land. In that land is natural that what I’ve said does not make sense.
Yes the cost of being able to simply install and update the app in your device, even App Store permission to use the app to it’s full extent, it’s is included in the app or subscription bill yet not discriminated. Your iOS license does not grant you the ability to install and update apps, the App Store does. You pay 30% on top of whatever devs define. It’s a very basic mathematical expression, so basic that it can be illusive.
You pay for that ability separately from the iOS license and device price. You should know that. If this is not clear maybe someone should make it clear.
Last edited:
It’s worth just reiterating this isn’t the government doing anything. Not sure why there are some posts suggesting the British government are involved.
I've always wondered, if I'm a member of the class in a class action lawsuit and we win but I only get a $1.50 gift card from the device maker and the lawyers rake in $150 million, can I sue the lawyers for their unjustifiable enrichment at my expense?
We've been down this road before.
End user pricing, probably, won't be affected by changes in the commission structure. A dev who charges .99 and gives Apple 30%/15% will still charge .99 even if Apple's commission was $0. Does one really believe the dev will reduce the price to .79?
That last part was actually the point I was making. Other than that, I’m not sure I understand what you’re trying to say.
Apple could set their cut to 0% and developers still wouldn’t change the price they themselves set on their apps.
Developers aren’t saying that they want to charge one price and Apple just automatically adds a markup to that price to get them 30%.
it’s a commission, not a tax.
Developers aren’t saying that they want to charge one price and Apple just automatically adds a markup to that price to get them 30%.
it’s a commission, not a tax.
And yet in all this basic simplicity, it's not true. The developer sets a price, and the user pays that price. The devs will most likely factor in Apples cut in the price they set, but as stated elsewhere, even when Apple dropped the cut from 30% to 15%, that didn't change the price the customer paid, so it's really not as simple as, for example, the US sales tax, where you pay a certain percentage on top of whatever a product costs.
I meant that it’s arbitrary in the sense that Apple could have chosen any number they wished. Indeed the e-mails brought up in the Epic trial do show they kicked numbers around before settling on 30%.
So it’s arbitrary in that sense that there is nothing in UK law (that I’m aware of) stopping them choosing to take 5% or 95%. What number is fair ultimately has to be decided by the developers that choose to publish their apps in the store.
The argument that developers are forced to accept 70% because the App Store is where the fish are don’t really hold weight with me… If developers refused to accept their percentage and withdrew their apps from the store, then customers would, in many cases, stop buying iPhones. Who would buy a smartphone with very few decent apps available when other platforms are available? It wouldn’t happen overnight but over time it would happen and Apple would be forced to lower their percentage to encourage developers back to the store.
So, this whole issue of Apple’s percentage has me scratching my head. What developers unhappy with giving up 30% need to do is club together, withdraw their apps from the store and hurt Apple in the pocket until such a time they Apple lowers their cut.
The U.K. is a common law system so such questions, where not explicitly defined, are deferred to what is reasonable. and how would it seem to a reasonable person. There does not need to be a specific level, and often there is not one, because it is better to allow a court to decide on the particular merits of a case than letting lawmakers pick an arbitrary number. with no regard for the specific contexts of a claim.
So, assuming the U.S. congress claimed figures are correct that the App Store costs $100m and generates $15bn in revenue, then the issue rests on whether a reasonable person considers a markup of roughly 149% to be reasonable. Whether Apple would be able to charge at such a level were they competing with other app stores, or would that have forced them to reduce their charge.
As iPhone and iPad users may only purchase apps and services for their devices from Apple, which creates a monopoly, it would be unlawful if it were not considered reasonable as it would be an abuse by Apple of their dominant position.
And it does not matter how Apple source the products they sell, or who decides the selling price because the commercial relationship the consumer has is only with Apple, as that is how they set up the system.
Nor does it matter whether developers would keep the difference if Apple reduced the fee, rather that reduce the cost of their products. That essentially is an issue over the wholesale price that developers charge Apple, so it is irrelevant to this case and for which there is competition between developers in providing products to Apple to sell anyway so such prices are already decide by the market.
(Besides which, if Apple cut their fees then the range of prices for developers may similarly be reduced anyway, such as dropping the 99p option and going back to 79p then the next level being £1.49 etc. It is not a given that everything else would stay the same.)
Which is not a phone though
It doesn't need to roam throughout the world. It doesn't get carried around and used in all circumstances. It doesn't get used to tap in/out of transport links, or pay at PDQ terminals in shops etc. It doesn't have the same level of all day/multiple day battery need for most people either.I don't think personal computer like a desktop/laptop is comparable to a mobile phone device at all in its use cases.
Without reading the legal complaint (the article doesn’t seem to have a link for it), it does seem that alleges that the commission causes higher prices for consumers.
If indeed that is the crux of the case, then you’re right, the easiest defence is to point to the fact that devs haven’t lowered their price in parity with the lower commission, because it shows there’s no direct relation between the two (and come to think of it, being able to prove that might actually be an additional benefit Apple has considered before lowering the commission).
Obviously to make that argument Apple has to provide statistical data that supports this notion. But based on merely anecdotal experience, I haven’t seen a single indie app lower their prices, including myself.
This isn’t so odd because, despite certain dev groups claiming that the 30% commission caused higher prices for consumers, their main complaint was they themselves not being able to keep as much from the sale as they wanted. So it’s not surprising that when the commission got lowered, they decided to keep the difference.
Personally I had no issue with the 30% and was content with the 70% I got, but despite that, the 85% I get to keep now is also welcome obviously.
Are you sure you have skin in the game? If you had you would know this:
The Dev does not charge anything. The App Store does, check your App Store billing. The App Store pays the dev 70% of the end price.
Here is how things actually work. Say you, the dev wants to receive 70 cents for the app, let call the suppliers price. You feel that the app is worth it, it fits your business model bla bla bla.
So what the dev does some basic maths: 70/0.7 = 100 cents. Check Apple price tables and voila, the thing closer to that is 99 cents, select. You get ~70 cents and the App Store gets ~30 cents. That is the end price.
If Apple decided to charge say 40%.
70/0.6=144 cents. Do a lookup again on Apple price look up tables, find somthing close, either you go for .99 or 1.99. If you go for 99 Apple is eating your lunch. Don’t want that of course, you go 1.99. You get more than you thought, Apple gets less, customers pay more.
Now say %15 commission.
70/0.85=82.4 cents. Do a look up again, .99. Ok select. Apple gets less with its reduced fee, the dev gets more … customer pay more than you thought initially.
So in the end of the say in this 3 scenarios, in rounded numbers:
1) Customer payes 30 cents to be able to install and update the App
2) 57.7 cents
3) 15 cents
In all cases of course it affects the end price.
We are talking one off. Now subscriptions … consider this values every month only to be able to install and update the App. Wether customers are paying to watch Netflix videos, or buying an eBook.
Simple.
Cheers.
PS: The higher the supplier price, the more you pay to be able to download and update the app. Its indeed very simple.
Last edited:
You are great at picking loser platforms. Next time ask for help or at least tell us your choices.