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Comment by ig1 | Hacker News Reader

Are companies prohibited from charging iPhone users an extra 30% ?

Isn't this the most objectionable part?

If Apple wants to charge 30%, fine, the companies impacted can just raise their iOS prices by 30% and pass it on to the customer. The higher cost of apps and subscriptions is not a tradeoff to buying Apple products. If customers see it as a bad tradeoff, they will by Android or WP7.

Instead, Apple is strong arming the content suppliers on their prices on other platforms. "make your price the same or less on our platform, or we will kick you off". That seems like the definition of anti-competitive. Why should Apple have any say what-so-ever on the price of pandora on Android?

If Google wants to pay Netflix and Pandora a fee so that their apps are bundled with Android phones for free, Netflix and Pandora could not take the money and give it away for free to users without getting kicked off of the Apple ecosystem. How is this not anti-competitive? Where is the FTC?

Yes, as the in-app offer must match or beat offers outside of the app.

Isn't it rather an extra 42%? If Apple takes 30% of the one dollar I used to make, in order to make that dollar again I'll have to charge $1.42, as its 30% is $.42.

Yes - you have to make the iphone price as cheap as a user can get it outside of your app.

I was wondering if there might be a way around that rule by claiming that what you sold in-app was a different product from what you sold out-of-app (e.g. on your website), but I'm not sure it would really work.

E.g. you sell the in-app "iPhone exclusive" version for $x and the out-of-app "everything except iPhone" version for ($x * 0.7) and then provide a "works on iPhone for no extra cost" special offer.

Or a seperate company/brand?

If Spotify was called Spatify on the app store, operated by a company that's owned by Spotify, their product wouldn't have to match the pricing of Spotify products on non-apple platforms... and perhaps 'Spatify' could announce a deal that allows Spotify customers to use their product for free.

Then it just comes down to whether Apple follow the rules by the letter, or apply common sense and tell Spotify not to take the piss.

Yeah, but then Spotify users wouldn't find Spatify in the app store.

Possibly they could call the sub-company "Spotify Magic" (random example - but something that will show up in search results for "spotify"), or possibly they could just ensure that Spatify gets well enough known for people to search for its new name.

I suspect if any company did this they would put a lot more research and thought into it than I have for my two quick HN comments - I'm really just wondering what, if somebody took this approach, Apple's response would be.

They could but Apple doesn't have to accept them into the App store. They can easily say "these two companies are the same", and enforce the same rules on them.

They're not legalistic, they're moralistic.

It reminds me of the "lowest advertised price" policy, where a workaround is that you don't see the discount until you add something to the shopping cart.

Too bad apple can actually do whatever they want rather than working within a codified framework. Loopholes are not going to work.

"Loopholes are not going to work."

But the market is. No company is going to charge 30% extra on other platforms - competition would eat them there. So at worst there will be a split into Apple-only and No-Apple companies, at least for commodity repackaged content.

Yup, when you start introducing countless rules like these topped with the tightly controlled procedure of approving/rejecting apps the whole iOS ecosystem just doesn't feel enticing (or easy) anymore. I can't believe that people actually have to put up with some dude sitting somewhere approving what apps are worth it and getting content via them will cost +30%. It's unreal, if content providers go on with this they'll pass the 30% down to user. How is that not a "tax"?

Could you offer a service and charge a premium for accessing that service on the iPhone (regardless of whether purchased it on iPhone or online) ?

Kinda. Apple require in-app subscriptions prices to be the same or less than what the subscription costs if bought elsewhere.

A possible solution could be to offer a separately priced subscription for people who want iOS access in addition to what's normally provided, and then keep the prices consistent in-app and outside. But I'm not sure how Apple would feel about a solution like that, it would be the closest thing to an explicit Apple tax we've seen, and it directly hurts the consumer (which Apple seem to care more about than hurting developers/"app store-vendors").

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