This is pretty grotesque coming from a trillion-dollar company that anyway already charges developers a yearly fee.
Without that top 10% layer of professional, honest apps from trustworthy companies, the app store is just a sea of scams, shams, and clones. Like barcode readers and tutorialware games with a $7.99/week subscription that only exists in the hopes that someone gets confused and clicks it.
What value does the App Store provide Hey?
Apple could easily remove the App Store tomorrow, sign deals with a dozen or so companies e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Twitter, Snap, Google, Microsoft etc and they would still sell devices.
Apple could easily do away with third party apps and sign licensing deals with third parties, and they’d still be massively popular. Most people download the same apps, and then there is an enormous long tail with barely any downloads at all.
For reasons unknown, Netflix apparently hates this incredible offer.
https://www.attpublicpolicy.com/broadband/who-should-pay-for...
By that definition Microsoft has a monopoly over XBox games, Tesla has a monopoly over their car apps, Sony has a monopoly over their DSLR apps etc, Salesforce has a monopoly over their marketplace apps etc.
Any antitrust action based on your definition would actually set a precedent that would unravel every single marketplace product. Hence pretty unrealistic.
Literally this exact issue - MS was locking Windows to IE as a browser.
Apple accounts for roughly 47% US market share to Google's 52%. Apple's app store generated 33 billion of the total 57.4 billion in revenue in 2018, with Google taking the rest.
They both operate app stores in very similar models, and both of them clearly need attention.
Just because two competitors happen to be splitting the profits from abuse doesn't make it any less of an issue.
I wish them the best while operating a distribution and marketing channel. I think it should be entirely illegal for them to prevent other channels from being created and installed on their systems.
To be clear - this is the definition of cartel behavior. They both operate walled gardens precisely because they know it makes a 3rd party breaking into the market an astonishingly small possibility, and they have both carved out a marketing strategy in the US that mostly doesn't overlap.
So now it's gone from Apple being a monopoly to it actually being a duopoly that is impossible for third parties to compete in.
Even though there are plenty of app manufacturers with their own stores e.g. Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei etc.
I'm not as familiar with Huawei, so I'll go look. But basically - I don't find this a compelling counterpoint. They have a helper app to install their own content, still regulated by Apple and Google's distribution channel - That does not an app store make.
And yes - My stance since the beginning has been that both Apple and Google are actively working to keep the status quo around software distribution and app monetization.
Further, they both pretty clearly have divided the content space.
Google - Focused on free apps as a channel to push ads, with less care on quality
Apple - Focused on higher quality apps with a higher price tag.
They've managed to capture an incredibly large market (70 billion in 2018) of which they simply get to suck 30% with no chance of competition.
They also happen to charge exactly the same rate for their services (30%) which I'm sure you'll also take as a clear sign they aren't cooperating in this market...
Otherwise you would realise that having an effective and profitable channel to market is one of the most difficult things to achieve.
Apple gives you one on a silver platter and for a pretty fair cost per acquisition compared to other channels.
For the Apple system, isn't that the only available channel to sell and distribute apps? It's not like there are other alternatives, or am I missing something?
So if you imagine a fictitious world where anyone could just install apps off the web then you would need to buy ads through the main 3 players above to get any visibility. Just like how it works today for SaaS or eCommerce products.
And given that we know roughly how much CPC and volume is for certain keywords e.g email app then it's easy to get a picture of whether Apple is being unreasonable or not.
Instead in this insane reality I have to pay Apple $100 every year for the privilege of distributing an app to my already existing user base.
It's great that you have these existing users but almost all developers don't. And so when people say that 30% is expensive often it's because the are ignorant of how much it costs most businesses to acquire customers.
And I have to pay to develop apps for most platforms so pretty confused why you feel like this is somehow unusual.
Everybody that’s paying the 30% still has to do their own marketing. Discovery through the app store is absolute shit. You’re trying to argue that getting lucky enough to be featured covers everybody that’s paying the 30%. It doesn’t.
But paid media is a small fraction of the marketing mix when it comes to sell and distribute a product - doesn't matter if it's software or a physical product.
Being unreasonable or not should be up to anyone of evaluates the distribution/sale/communication channel. But I'd limit this fee to be for the "access" to the only distribution channel - because you don't have a guarantee of clicks/impressions/downloads or any media KPI for that fee.
The CPC of a paid keyword is a subset of many subsets of media alone.
The issue is that it's not really an honest choice - This company has decided that they'd rather not use it, and they have effectively lost access to the platform entirely.
Basically - What you're saying is that Apple should have the legal monopoly over building channels to market for iOS (because they prohibit any other form of distribution). I don't believe that should be true. I'd actually say that's exactly what put Microsoft into a world of pain for IE, and they were actually much more open about it - a user was free to install a different browser on Windows, a user is not free to install a different app store on iOS.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#bus...