Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olliej | Hacker News Reader

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FB, etc get the use of Apple's infrastructure, they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers.

That shit costs money, whether it costs 30% I don't know, but given that seems to be in the order of the charges of every other store (what % of sale price do companies get on retail sales?).

The problem here is a bunch of companies have decided that they want special rules for themselves that don't include paying for services that they benefit from.

Any iOS device apple sells has 5 years of ongoing costs - software support, service upkeep, etc.

Google's store doesn't have the update and software maintenance costs, and the actual hardware sellers have demonstrate no interest in taking them on, so it's clearly not free. In fact google charges 30% on everything as well, but also makes money from all of the surveillance they have on the platform (after all, spying is how google makes its money).

Put very simply. Apple makes a profit from a sale of hardware when the user buys a new device. That's it. They continue to support that hardware for 5 years.

Google makes profit from every android device as long as that device is being used. If you buy a second hand android device then that device continues to generate revenue for google.

Despite this google charges the same commission/rent as apple.

> FB, etc get the use of Apple's infrastructure, they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers. > That shit costs money

Exactly. That shit costs money. And by that I mean iPhone. People pay $1000 dollars for that. It’s not a freemium game where transactions on the platform support the product. It’s one of the most expensive phones on the market, and long term update support is part of why their prices are so high.

You mean like the $1000 android phones?

All the reporting I've ever said that it isn't apple's flagship phones that are most popular, it's the lower priced ones which are in the $300 range.

> In fact google charges 30% on everything as well

The difference here being, I can install any app, from anywhere onto my Android device, without modifying it any way past changing one setting. In fact there are several non-Google app stores you can install, which charge either significantly less or nothing at all to the developer.

There simply is no analogue for iPhone or iPad without jailbreaking, something that ultimately creates more headaches than it solves. For all intents and purposes, Apple holds a monopoly on marketing and distribution with regards to iOS apps, something no other device or software manufacturer is currently doing.

> FB, etc get the use of Apple's infrastructure

"Get"? Apple forces all iOS apps to use that infrastructure. Google has a much better case because the Play Store is optional, but Apple dug their own grave here.

In-app payment processing is absolutely not worth a 30% fee. In a normal, competitive environment, Stripe and Paypal charge 3% + $0.30.

the vast majority of that 3% is the CC company rate, and that's not going to stripe.

Which means that stripe is making 30c + maybe some tiny additional amount per transaction.

Their hardware PoS devices cost money and/or rent, so they make a profit there.

The distribution cost for their app is covered by amazon.

Which means that their remaining per transaction cost is the cost of the payment details which is presumably in the order of 1kb, which I'm fairly sure is in the fraction of cents realm.

Facebook was setting up a marketplace for paid digital events:

> On Friday, the social media giant claimed that Apple rejected the inclusion of a warning that the latter company would take 30% of sales in a paid-online events feature Facebook is rolling out in an update of its app.

Do you really think Apple provided 30% of the value of the event -- created and hosted by someone else, organized by Facebook?

There's a point at which Apple is not responsible for creating the entire economy, even if parts of it incidentally touch OSX. Like, this is functionally no different than the web browser OSX is providing -- but Apple has decided that because it touches the App store, they deserve a ton of flesh.

> they get the benefits of apple providing updates to hardware for 5 years without charging consumers.

Apple's updates included things like intentionally slowing down old phones without notifying users of what was going on, instead of encouraging a cheap battery replacement.

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