Apple and Google must allow other in-app payment systems, Korean law declares

Not necessarily alternative app stores / install mechanisms, which is a separate issue.

There's a choice of app store in Android and almost nobody uses Amazon App Store, F-Droid, Samsung App Store and so on. It's great that they can exist, but I don't think the Mac App Store (which has been neglected since day 1) offers any guidance.

People mostly use what they know or are giving by default. In desktop, be it Windows, Linux or macOS, people aren't used to app stores.

Pretty sure apple’s developer documentation would still be bad though.

Whether or not Apple permits alternative payment systems for iOS/iPadOS, all the apps will likely remain sandboxed.

Not Mac user but I guess it is the same as for Windows. I have some desktop products for Windows. The thought of releasing them to MS Store had never crossed my mind.

That would take away from the smaller person's chance.

That list grows stale and complaints over who is on the list starts.

You'll pay the same price, but instead of getting a license you can run on unlimited of your own machines, or sometimes a fixed number like you can register it to 3 machines at a time, you can only install it on other computers that are managed by the same iCloud account. I've learned this the hard way with a bunch of productivity apps, if you want to use it on a personal machine and a work machine in the same way you can easily install all the free apps that you use on both machines, you're out of luck if you bought it on the Mac App Store. I've ended up re-buying a few different productivity tools over the years that I made the mistake of buying on the Mac App Store first, so that I actually had a portable license I could use that wasn't tightly coupled to making my personal text messages and iCloud files available on the same computer I want to use the license on. You also can't install mac app store apps via homebrew in a setup script or any kind of tooling you use to manage the computer (maybe this is getting better with shortcuts, but I'm not aware of a way to do it).

If it's a cross-platform app, you pay the same price but lose the ability to ever run it on Windows in the future if you buy it from the app store. If it's one of the few AAA games that support MacOS at all, if you buy on Steam you usually get a cross-platform license and there will often be a bunch of bundles that include extra DLC packs at a discounted price. Once a game is a few years old it will start going on sale all the time on Steam. The mac app store version usually won't go on the same sales and usually doesn't have any bundles available either.

If you have multiple user accounts created on a computer, you can't even upgrade a free app that a different user installed via the Mac App store, even if your user also has admin privileges. Only the same user that originally installed it can upgrade the app even though the app is available to every user on the machine.

There's really no reason to ever install anything from the Mac App Store, other than first-party Apple apps where you have no other choice (like XCode, Garage Band, Keynote, Final Cut, etc.)

The evolutionary history matters a lot in these things, since they set the culture and precedent on the platform.

Macs and desktops started (or at least, became popular) as an open environment where users obtained software directly from vendors. iOS and Android (with the caveat that it has always supported sideloading) started as closed systems, and the vast majority of customers are used to getting their software from the official app store.

UPDATE: Fixed a typo

But I have concerns about additional stores, not about entropy and all the multistore problem from a UX perspective, but as a privacy threat. I like the current Apple politics "we are a hardware company, not another user data selling platform," and they do great things in that way.

But what happens, if Facebook move their apps to their store without any restrictions on privacy? So they can do anything they want, and not only they. If now App Store got strict rules about privacy, what will happen in that situation?

It's not so unbelievable that Facebook will try to get back their "data profit" from Apple users.

At the very least Apple should improve the store to make it Amazon level in feature set. But it feels like they abandoned it.

No, if regulators do their job, nobody gets to ask that question because there is continuous competition. Getting to that monopoly or oligopoly requires sustained effort from would be monopolists, it's a strategy they have been executing for more than a decade. And if you do that, you must expect there is a moment where society says: ok, it's time to regulate it and not let company X extract economic rent solely based on market dominance.

I'd presume that would be when they became a monopoly, which may be seen as something that comes with new responsibilities. "With great [market] power, comes great responsibility" would probably make a lot of sense to a lot of people. We wouldn't hold tiny entrants to the same standards as those who can set prices, sue into dust or buy almost all of the competition.

It was merely a less awful deal than most other indie commission models, with sites like Kongregate and their ilk demanding >80%. Against that kind of flaying and skinning, 30% was an improvement!

I've said it before. A very good agent, who actually works for their client and arranges them with repeat lucrative contracts, gets 15%. App stores, as gatekeepers to their walled gardens, extort twice that.

Btw - if they want to get into recurring payment scene, let them compete with payment processor fee structures. For the privilege of arranging trusted, mostly secured payments and handling the back office accounting, 3% should be a damn good ceiling. The payment industry is making money hand over fist with that kind of cut.

In any case, though, that's not what's going on with this Korean law. Antitrust violations of existing law are generally determined by courts and or regulatory agencies, whereas this is a new law from a legislature signalling that they want to encourage a competitive marketplace in this manner. Of course, with lobbying and nationalism, it's quite possible that this law was guided by powerful Korean interests or nationalist parties who simply want to hobble foreign entities in favor of local companies: still not an example of antitrust, except possibly in the other direction.

in any case, in the US it's not monopoly that's against the law, it's that market power being used to abuse market participants or influence prices. And there is no clearcut answer, but there are "guidelines", for example if you control 70% of a market and your major competitor controls 25%, you have a good basis to say that you are not a monopoly. Notice that Microsoft invested to prop up Apple when Apple was on the ropes in the late 90's. That type of action shows how tricky and pernicious these regulations can be, Microsoft gets the excuse "we have a major competitor" and also benefits from the success of the competitor.

But that's the market share part of the equation. The additional aspects are "can it be shown that the price of the good is being manipulated upward?" So, Microsoft offering big discounts to PC manufacturers to get them to exclusively offer MS OSes on their platform: are those discounts abuse of the market?

I'm not a particular expert on this, there are many places to quibble with what I've said, I'm just trying to offer the flavor of what I thought when I read your questions.

Oh, at what point did Apple cross the line? Has Apple even crossed the line now? Is not really the question. By the time enforcement actions are taken, companies are generally well over the line. The real question is "how much can we abuse our market power and get away with it before the clamor to regulate us gets too strong for politicians to ignore? And what is the temperament of the administration in office?"

When Apple launched Apple Pay (in 2014, not that long ago), its App Store rules turned from dubious to outright market abuse by using one market where it had a strong position to infiltrate another very different market of payment processing (there are other issues, but this story is about payment processors).

By the way, 'monopoly' has little to do with it. It's about market power, monopoly is an nigh irrelevant term to the issue.

First, with regards to the App store or Music store, Apple is the Market maker. It controls who gets to sell Apps on their market similar to how NASDAQ or the NY Stock Exchange controls which stocks are listed. Korea is saying Apple you already control the market, but you shouldn't dictate the payment systems too. I expect Apple will start raising the fees it charges to list Apps on their App store.

Second, this article is about South Korea. South Korea doesn't care about the historical context of the US. Korea is saying if the Apple App store want access to South Korean customers, you must play by our rules. This is not unlike the European Union saying if you want to store data about EU citizens, then you must comply with GDPR.

For the past few decades, we had assumed there was a monolithic global market for software apps. We are seeing now the fragmentation of the internet and the software market as countries assert their power over big tech.

But the rules and scrutiny changes once you become large enough to be "considered" a monopoly i.e. once your decisions and policies start affecting a significant portion of the market/ecosystem, then your policies are going to be subject to new regulation.

Google supporting side loading from the very beginning was a smart idea, even if its too complex and scary for the majority of Android users. They should have done the same for payments.

Didn't Apple have the only app store for iOS devices at that point? For that matter the competing app stores of the time (for Symbian devices) were dreadful and all of them are long gone.

To answer your question - when developing for Apple went from being a choice to a necessity to run your business.

They are a monopoly for getting your app on ios phones and in front of ios users.

This is why bundling is part of anti-trust law.

Bundling their app store as the only way to install applications on ios devices should have been stopped years ago.

Of course where the seller has no control or dominance over the tying product so that it does not represent an effectual weapon to pressure buyers into taking the tied item any restraint of trade attributable to such tying arrangements would obviously be insignificant at most. As a simple example, if one of a dozen food stores in a community were to refuse to sell flour unless the buyer also took sugar it would hardly tend to restrain competition in sugar if its competitors were ready and able to sell flour by itself. (https://casetext.com/case/northern-pac-r-co-v-united-states)

Whether Apple has enough dominance over the smartphone market to cause an unreasonable restraint of trade in the app distribution market is up to a court to decide at this point.

2. iPhone was really, a phone, an internet communicator, and a wide screen iPod. That was arguably true all the way until 2014 when the larger screen iPhone 6 Plus was introduced.

3. But today's Smartphone are more like Pocket Computer. Games, Video Consumption, Facebook. At a point when some people were laughing about phablet. Now vast majority of phones on the planet are phablet. They replaces consumer computing. They are no longer a phone in the sense of phone in 2007.

4. You now have a phone that replaces everything, Smartphone becomes a pocket computer that is the centre of our modern society. Access to everything digital.

5. The problem starts when Apple decided to focus on Services Revenue. Remember before the success of iPhone Plus, people were writing off Apple as their sales number did not grow as much as the Smartphone market. And Wall Street was putting pressure on Apple. Service Revenue was Tim Cook's answer ( or middle finger ) to shut these people up.

6. So Apple start breaking out services revenue, stopped reporting iPhone Unit sales, rework iOS, macOS, Map, iCloud and other cost from their product segment to paying $10 per unit to Services Revenue. And announce their target of Services Revenue by 2020.

7. Apple started enforcing rules on 30% as access fees. If it was coming from iPhone, Apple want 30% of it. It wasn't much of a problem with an App. It is much more problematic with services that use App as access. Wordpress blog, Domain Name, Teaching Class, Video Streaming Site, Creator Selling Digital Asset. Until someone complain, Apple started adding exemption to their rules of collecting 30%.

8. Services Sector works different to products. Software like Pixelmator or Photoshop are Software products. Netflix, or some Cartoon Network are Services. Apple used to turn a blind eye on many of these services. Once they start enforcing it because they had to chase their services revenue target. You start seeing lots of complaining.

9. Why should Apple dictate everything that goes through iPhone? If the world is going digitisation, does that mean everything that goes through iPhone will be charged 30% more? How is that not a tax? When it is Applied the same ( or nearly the same ) everywhere. How is this even sustainable?

10. Customer signing up a Email, when majority of cost are in Server. Or Signing a Real Person tutoring, where the cost is the Teacher in front of Screen. Why does Apple demand 30% of it? And how did this 30% number came from for their industry?

11. Lots of argument about Apple wrongly focus on consumer and completely ignore business. SMB are still large part of our society. And they are complaining just as much as big companies like Netflix or Spotify.

12. It is made worst when COVID hit, it speed up the whole digitisation of our society by at least 5 years if not 10 years. Explosive growth in e-commerce and other Digital goods or services. Why is it so hard to deal with Apple?

13. And they are not a niche anymore, they have anywhere from 20% to over 60% in key markets. Despite Tim Cook flat out lie about this. ( His likely defence is the term Market Share could be defined as Unit Sales and not unit usage ). And despite court doesn't like to define market themselves, if iPhone's owner are higher spending group and vast majority of your customer are iPhone customer, is that 30% an abuse of their market power?

So to answer your question: it potentially crosses over into abusive as soon as you are restricting customers from doing anything. And it gets less likely that you'll get away with it the more dominant your market position (as a scale), and the greater the importance of your product or service to society (which is why game console currently get away with these practices but utilities don't).

Is it a usability nightmare? Perhaps. But device makers shouldn’t make that “choice” for their users. Likewise you might not like the fact that your city has small businesses instead of a single large warehouse store on the basis of convenience and usability. But the public would not agree with you and that’s why we enact laws against anti-competitive behavior.

> Of course this should force them into binding arbitration and otherwise challenging the discount should void that discount.

So you want apple and google to act as even more monopolistic bullies ...

I see that you're taking this position as what you would do if you were Apple or Google, not what is the best course of action for all stakeholders. But you then opine that this is justified because the status quo is better for consumers.

The thing is, we already know that it's not. Apple and Google allow third party payment processors for _some_ of their apps. Would it be your best interests as a consumer to pay 40-50% more then you currently do for Uber and GrubHub? There's a reasonable argument to be made that those businesses simply would not be economically viable if they had to pay a 30% apple/google tax on every transaction. How many other apps or services went under (or were never made in the first instance) because Apple decided that their business needed to pay them a 30% cut of everything.

Which brings us to another salient point. Apple claims that they need to charge their 30% cut to pay for the cost of running the app store and for the developer tools they provide. But if this is the case, why should Uber and Facebook get to use them for free?

The big players are the ones that will switch, amazon, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, etc. And beyond that, competitors like Square and Stripe will release SDKs that make purchasing just as easy as the system IAP, and will actually force Apple to improve their system.

If Apple thinks hosting costs are of any consequence, then charge people for hosting if they don't actively use IAP. For 99% of apps hosting is pennies on the dollar, but for games like Fortnite it may actually cost a decent amount, especially for the binary size.

The end point is that there are no technical limitations to anything here, it is all political and Apple has the ability to change this at any time. There just isn't any point when they can continue to rake in 30% of every digital subscription service on the internet that wants to exist on their platform.

From Apple/Google's perspective this is a terrible strategy.

The problem is that, if we assume the Pareto Principle holds, the larger publishers probably generate 80% of revenue on the App Store.

So assuming 5% is operating at cost, you are talking about them probably sacrificing 70%-75% of their current profits (i.e. moving to 5% margin vs 25%, profit for high-grossing apps is probably closer to 1/5th previous rather than 1/3rd).

So they avoid the lawsuit, but they also lose all the profits they are trying to protect anyway.

Binding arbitration is a uniquely US-legal system thing that is not legal elsewhere. (And imo it is better to have a more neutral third party than an arbitration private firm that has one of the parties as a recurring customer)

Worst case is you want to be on the app store at 30% but are not allowed back in.

> I stand by my position that end users don't actually want competing third-party app stores

I disagree. More stores bring more competition. Both in terms of platform costs and in terms of promos for customer acquisition.

The epic game store is kind of crap, but their weekly free game setup has offered some great content. I haven't given them a single dollar and I've gotten a number of titles including Control, Enter the Gungeon, Alien Isolation, etc.

I say let them fight

Apple overstepped, and they are going to get reeled back.

I have 9 chat apps on my phone. I just counted, and that's skipping things like email and basecamp that I might have included to inflate the number. It's not ideal, and the downsides can be exaggerated for the sake of banter, but overall the chat app situation is fine. Similarly, I wouldn't mind having more app stores.

I expect there'd be one all the free software hardcores believe in, one that fills the role Steam does on PC, another with all the "too hot for TV" content that Apple and Google won't touch with a 10 foot pole, a few developer-publishers big enough to get traction, and dozens of also-rans that nobody uses. Yes, slightly more inconvenient like all the chat apps, but in reality it'd also be fine.

I don't think it makes sense to say what consumers do and don't "want," because largely they don't understand the terrain the App Store and Google Play put down. Ask people if they'd like a 2nd store that lets them install apps that contain porn without putting it behind hidden curtains in otherwise general-purpose apps, then we might expect positive responses. Ask people if they want an app store that contains more malware because the app store monopoly provides a chokepoint to enact user protection that on-device sandboxing can't, then we'd expect negative responses.

It should be legally required that any device that is marketed as a general-purpose computer, whether pocketable or not, and is shipped in a locked state, is fully unlockable by the end user. Without a single network packet sent to manufacturer's servers. That's the only way we as a society could fix this dire situation.

In other words, if I buy a phone from Apple, I should have the choice for this to be the only interaction I have with Apple. They sold it to me. I gave them money, they gave me an iPhone. It's mine now. They're no longer in possession of it. I thus should be able to run arbitrary code on it with highest privileges possible with no hindrance.

Indeed would be nice to centralize all subscriptions, we have yet to see how they would interface with 3rd party payment options. But on the whole this should be a win - if anything, those competitors will have a strong incentive to improve their UX.

I think that's right. The next step would be for a large enough market to have a similar law, and then they'll just have that as their policy globally. That probably means EU or US.

I always found this line of argument disingenious and disturbing.

Disingenious because it doesn't happen historically, so it sounds like a tired threat

Disturbing - are we saying we would rather kneecap our democratic institutions, right or wrong, than live without iPhones?

We'd die to defend our lands and laws from demands of foreign governments, but fold to demands of foreign megacorps?

They now have a reason to make it better, since they can now actually compete with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

I'm not sure that Apple can do it without being an intermediary in the process - managing the billing. And... well... that's what Apple Pay is.

In order for Apple to be the one to show and cancel subscriptions, they need to be the ones billing you and then processing that transaction (possibly batching it up with others to reduce processing fees).

Likewise, if there's a dispute - for example a child made a few hundred dollars of in app purchase and the parents would like to refund that... Apple can reverse those transactions ( https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204084 ). If you're dealing with a 3rd party payment system... you're going to have to deal with the 3rd party payment system on your own.

Another "it can be gotten around" when you leave the App Store and payment processor is the in app purchase constraints ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204396 ) in that a developer wouldn't have to honor that check at all.

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The future of 3rd party payment processors that developers ask for really means taking Apple and its APIs out of the process. Entering in the credit card information (making sure that developers aren't trying to bypass access constraints on the wallet) and sending that out themselves.

For example, PayPal charges 4.99% plus a fixed fee that's about $0.10 per transaction ( https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees ). This is comparable to what a developer would have to pay to Visa or any other payment processor for doing micro transactions of their own. Having Apple do it means that Apple would really like to charge at least 5% + $0.10/transaction which for a $0.99 is $0.15 and that's 15%... which is the amount that a small developer shop would have to pay for doing it through Apple.

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And so, I return back to the question - how would you see Apple opening up the APIs for doing payment processing without doing the payment processing themselves (and insuring extra expenses)?

Once upon a time, flip phones had 'app stores' also maintained by a solo telecom.

Similarly, an iOS app which substantially relies upon (and must be compiled with) Apple's libraries in order to work is subject to whatever the terms Apple includes in their software license. Of course Apple isn't requiring code to be open source like the GPL. Apple could choose whatever terms they want. It would be perfectly within Apple's right to require a revenue share for use of those libraries—say, the Metal graphics APIs—just as Epic Games does for the use of Unreal Engine libraries.

Therefore it's entirely reasonable to imagine that if third party payment gateways are permitted, Apple could still organise things so that they are legally entitled to a percentage cut of app sales. Again, just like Unreal Engine.

I am not against a publishing fee instead of what there is now, but it should be fair and transparent. Not that the current system is fair and transparent...

I'm not trying to portrait Google as innocent, there's still work to be done. But they are absolutely in different leagues with Apple when it comes to user freedom.

I remember paying $25 or so to open a google play developer account. For Apple, you pay $99 yearly.

The commons includes bombing other countries and waging unwinnable wars?

I have no problem paying taxes if they were actually used for the commons, but only a fraction are used for the commons. Far too much is going to benefit special interest groups such as defense contractors, public sector employee benefits and pensions that are far above what private sector employees get.

Google and Apple are giving them devs access to something they built. That is not a tax.

“Taxation is theft” is a very simple concept. If I don’t pay my taxes, people with guns come to my house, even if I don’t use public services. If you don’t want to pay Apple or Google, go develop for other devices.

Interestingly, the sweet spot seems to be in the mid-30s for the population in aggregate (which lines up with Apple's fees almost exactly), but is someplace around 70% for the highest earners. This implies you could jack up the top marginal tax rates to > 60%, and while most billionaires may grumble a bit, they will not ragequit from the economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Income_tax_rate_a...

I can't imagine it would be difficult for Apple to implement this for their stores. Maybe someone who works in this field can chime in..

It doesn't even need to be the same or lower than competition. Since there are so many apps already integrated (and even in future their API might be easier or more likely to be used by app users) and nobody wants to go through the friction of adding new ones they can still be slightly more expensive and retain majority of the market share.

But if they won't then I guess you will know it never really was about protecting the user or whatever, just a cash grab from walled garden.

And then see how the ecosystem degrades to the lowest common denominator and we re-enter the Windows 95 era.

Race to build malware apps, virus and malware checker apps to prevent the malware etc.

What you are suggesting is applying the same logic to App stores that they're applying to payments. That's more likely, not less, if this legislation goes through in SK and gets copied by other countries. So, same direction.

FWIW, I think payments are an easier place to make progress. It's hard to imagine an alternative app store taking off in response to a single countries' laws. Even if it did, a diverse app store market kind of negates the app store concept entirely. At that point, you may as well return to the old ways.

Alternative payment options will be immediately utilized by devs. The market can support lots of them, and prices will quickly respond to competition. If users and devs have choice, market prices will be nowhere near 30%. I'd be surprised if it's >10% for long.

Many users simply don't want to share their payment details with App Stores because they don't like "one payment serves all" setups. They want to be asked each time for their payment details because they feel that gives them control

Likewise, many users already have payment arrangements with providers like Paypal that they trust, and don't want to add one more trusted payment provider to their list

As a developer, I want to offer all options to users - App Store payment, Paypal, CC, and anything else

So I like where this law is going, and I have no doubt it increases the chances of other legislations imposing further "restrictions on what is not allowed" on mobile devices

End users won't lose anything in the worst case.

Devs will have to support multiple platforms, different API and options. Also different legal arrangements would be needed as each country has different laws and processes. Remember the agreements and forms we fill for different countries when we want to sell paid apps/features on App Store? I also can't wait to pay account fees for many app stores and modify my apps to fit specific app store rules.

The %30 cut, for me covers this boring complexity. I'm sceptical that the potentially lower commissions will offset the added development and administrative costs.

As for the users, people will start forgetting where they paid what. They will get frustrated, blame devs etc. It would become tiresome and many will be turned off the moment a payment is requested simply because they don't want to go through the same stuff multiple times.

I despise platform fragmentations. Instead of telling companies what they must do, I think the regulators should intervene for market fairness, i.e. Apple&Google getting heavily fined when enforce different rules on different developers differently or compel them to accept an app in the App Store if they can't clearly indicate which rule is being broken.

I would like to remind you all the troubles we need to go through to support just platforms: AppStore and Play Store. I am NOT looking forward to start paying fees and do development/Marketing work/Adjustments for Epic, Microsoft, Oracle, T-Mobile, Vodafone etc. just to reach the exact same users as of today.

Edit:

I, as a developer, don't want to deal with multiple platforms and their management and fees. Please tell me if you are mobile developer or is your opinion ideological. The Arguments so far look like coming from people who have no real experience with getting an app into the AppStore.

How do you plan to sell Apps in the UK, France, Turkey, charge VAT and pay it to the respective governments for example. How do you plan to file your export paperwork in the US? How do you plan to deal with compliance?

Seriously, are there any indie developers here with hands on experience? How do you handle international trade and taxation outside of platforms like AppleStore?

Like a donation? Or are these companies evading tax laws?

As long as there are regulators with a lot of power there will be incentive to corruption anyway.

I like free competition. Something that Google and Apple were trying to prevent.

But putting all in the hands of an ever-increasing state is not the way to go either. Though I gree with the decision.

> a reasonable (single percentage) fee for facilitating payments.

I want to point out, though, that the service Apple provides is not merely payment processing. They offer total customer management. Which, when integrated with their entire developer offering (TestFlight, App Store, etc) is pretty neat. I’ve integrated my app with Apple for iOS and then had to do it all over again with Braintree of web. You might say that entire exercise speaks to the inanity of the App Store monopoly, but the experience illustrated for me how much more Apple provides than just mere payment processing. You won’t find the words “chargeback” or “dispute” in Apple’s docs, because they take care of all that for you. With Apple, you don’t have to program UIs for changing subscription tiers or viewing transaction histories. And many other things.

Is it worth 30%? No. 15%? I don’t think so. Should I have to maintain and juggle different integrations for every app store? Definitely not. But Apple’s offering is decent and comprehensive. It would be made much better if it wasn’t a racket that held developers hostage. Think App Store competing with Play Store on Android devices. And vice versa. Now that would be cool!

I really hope similar legislation is passed in the United States and EU.

A somewhat faster response would have been nice though.

- Samsung is a major conglomerate domestic to S Korea. LG is a similar congolmerate

- They make consumer appliances and durable goods, similar to how General Electric in the US used to (washer, dryer, fridges, dish washers, TVs) and are on their way to make them "smart" and connected devices

- They compete in the Android phone and smartphone market. LG (another S Korean consumer devices conglomerate) had recently withdrawn from that market.

- They own their own cloud (Joyent acquisition). However they are cutting back on their consumer cloud offering in Mar 2021.

- They own world-class semiconductor fabrication facilities, peers of TSCM and Intel. Samsung produces chips, memory for themselves and other customers. They also produce milspec, secure smartphones for the US military

- They own an AI research team (Viv Labs acquisition, founded by the team that created Siri and sold to Apple)

- They have Samsung Pay

In other words, Samsung has its own flywheel going and controls a national stategic assets (semiconductor fabs). Maybe South Korean law is intended to open the market more, but I think this move is as much motivated as being able to project economic power through Samsung as anything.

Imagine a government forcing AirBnb to let people pay hand to hand to the owner of the apartment. It's the same issue, right?

Apple isn't worth defending.

I struggle to understand acting as if those things were some incredibly important stuff just like water, internet, computers,

or something that nobody would risk losing e.g via standing to fight against its vendor

Maybe losing those will result in creating new, more open and less vendor locking alternatives

If anything is going to shake up law enforcement and regulators it's these megacorps holding things hostage because they don't want to comply.

Well, ok, maybe that's an extreme take. Short of that, certainly, developers would possibly pay some kind of annual fee to gain publishing access to the store? Maybe a setup like this could work? Wait, (puts finger to ear) I'm getting some new information, it turns out... they already do this?

Yes, as changes like this roll out in more countries, inevitably, their ability to collect commissions will get "weird". Its their own damn fault! Apple and Google were the ones who picked a rotten, cursed way to collect revenue. They'll need to figure it out; its their lunch.

How long has apt, snap, npm, whatever, ran with zero revenue? Epic and Microsoft run stores at, what, 12%? Don't start with me about how "they're incumbents, they have to price lower"; yeah, they're pricing nearer to cost instead of using their monopoly market power to justify arbitrarily higher prices! Application distribution is not that hard. Its not that expensive. Its a fucking GET request on an object that can be easily CDN'd, with some light versioning on top; just think about how many package managers Linux has, then tell me Apple needs to make a billion bucks a year to justify keeping the ten people who maintain it around. Its a value-addition to the OS and for your users who paid $1400 for a new phone; not a line of business. Anyone who says differently is trying to sell you something (and Apple is definitely trying to sell you something).

More like the Republic of Samsung and Samsung Pay.

You would have to be a fool to think Samsung doesn't want a cut of app sales on their devices and as the most powerful company in Korea with large influence over government, they'll get their way. This was never about developers and it isn't a watershed moment to be excited about (unless I guess you live in Korea).

Just take a moment to reflect on your comments, if they are reasonable and you're getting downvoted, and nobody is bothering to respond, it's probably populism. It it was it is, it's too bad, but don't fret about it.

B) switch your region to South Korea and bam - multiple AppStores while in the US

For me, above proves South Korea is less corrupt and far better governed than most EU countries and USA.

Many platforms require fees to sell on them. eBay for example has asked for a percentage for years, even if it did not handle payments at all.

Are Apple and Google going to be forced to offer the service (the App Store) for free because of their duopoly?

Or perhaps you need to go re-read the comments? I don't recall people writing "Apple and Google are in the right and deserve to win" as much as I recall people writing "Apple and Google are wrong and deserve to lose" and "30% is unfair os they deserve to lose", and people pointing out that the current system does have benefits.

I recall people saying that they don't think their behaviour is outright illegal, or doesn't qualify as antitrust in the US. Obviously regulation supersedes this.

In fact, making regulatory laws to force changes in the way they are behaving, implies that it's not illegal now, so seems to vindicate the people saying that?

To the extent that I've seen this point on HN, it has always been in the context that there is no law in the US which prohibits what Apple or Google are doing, and hence it would be difficult for regulators to win without new laws or rules in place. I'm not American, so I can't say whether those people were right or not, but I think it would've been pretty ridiculous if anyone said there would never be laws against it.

No one is forcing you to go through Walmart. The problem with IOS is that you are forced to go through Apple. A user cannot pay, download and install the app directly from a developers website.

The major difference here is that while I don't own the Walmart store, I do own my phone. What is allowed to be sold in the store is determined by Walmart, just as what's installed on my phone should be determined by me, the owner.

Then by all means, please charge me separately for these things. Because I don’t need them. Apple doesn’t do marketing for me, never promoted my app. People find my app through my own marketing channels.

Charge me roughly 2 % for In App Purchases just like Stripe and PayPal.

Charge me a traffic fee for whatever download traffic I cause. This way, I at least benefit from my app being only like 5 MB in size.

If I want to be featured on the App Store, charge me.

The rest like App Store listing? Covered by my $100 developer fee.