Decreasing service fees on subscriptions to 15%
android-developers.googleblog.com
android-developers.googleblog.com
BTW, this regulatory pushback may really harm Android, because according to Sundar, Google Play constitutes most of Android revenue. With those revenues gone, that's a big chunk of money gone for Google. App Store revenue is also 37% of Apple's profits, so obviously they're fighting tooth and nail, but it's easy to see where things are going. Apple/Google are going to be pretty desperate to prevent a total exodus.
But it's not the cost for operating the payments gateway. It's the cost for the channel.
The real world equivalent is supermarkets, retailers etc charging for products to be stocked on their shelves. Customer acquisition is extremely expensive and difficult and stores expect to be compensated for it.
Except it's not. People don't download Uber or Netflix because of the app stores. Epic demonstrated unequivocally they could get installs without Google involved as an intermediary. The app store value at this point is singularly it their platform-specific monopolies, and the fact that you have no choice but to play ball to do business on mobile.
> The real world equivalent is supermarkets
It's nothing like that. I have multiple supermarket chains I can go to - I have only Apple and Google when dealing with mobile. Customers can choose either Apple or Google, but most businesses are stuck doing business with both. Not even Microsoft screwed over both sides like this.
At this point, Google and Apple have done far more harm to both customers and businesses than Microsoft ever had. It's beyond frustrating.
You have plenty of options. Your argument is basically that Wal-Mart is everywhere, so Wal-Mart should be forced to serve you on your terms.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/19/22632804/epic-google-laws...
Meanwhile, you reference Cydia (my alternative to the App Store), but I am myself suing Apple for over their efforts to lock us out competing on iOS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/10/cydia-a...
It made my experience of owning my first (and last) iPhone so much better - thanks very much for that, always a fan. Iirc, I was also able to buy one or two apps there, but my memory may be hazy.
I hope you're successful with your Apple lawsuit.
It sounds really lame to say, but it feels like what you're suggesting is the exact opposite of what the market wants. People want a device they can give to their kid without worrying that they'll mess it up.
And I don't think this is an issue where any side actually cares about freedom; you allow proprietary software on Cydia, which sort of kills the user freedom argument, but even then, people would still be free to just buy a phone that supports them using their phone in a way they want to.
If that's what the market wanted then Apple wouldn't have to spend so much money on preventing their customers from rooting their phones, running any apps they want to run and using alternative mobile app distribution methods.
> People want a device they can give to their kid without worrying that they'll mess it up.
Chromebooks are those devices, which is one of the reasons they're used in education. There were 40 million Chromebooks in public schools and about 53 million K-12 students in the US in 2019.
You can run whatever Android or Linux software you want on them, and use whatever mobile app distribution you want, too, like F-Droid.
I hope you get somewhere with the complaint.
Is that sarcasm? All of those combined don't even have 0.5% of the market.
There's no competition, period.
For example is there competition in the "operating system for Samsung microwaves" market ?
They are negligible.
Back when the Amazon app store first started, they gave away a high quality free app every week. Great for user acquisition, then IIRC they stopped paying the app developers whose apps they were giving away, and the quality of the store overall started to drop off soon after.
If Amazon had made a play of taking a much smaller % of payment fees, sales and subs, they could have continued building momentum and been a serious competitor.
I presume they decided not to for some good reason, but the potential was there.
If Wal-Mart had nearly the prevalence of Google Play (on Android) and the App Store (on iOS), it should probably have some cap on its cut, too.
Uber would never have existed without the App Store.
> It's nothing like that
It's exactly like that. That's where the business model comes from. It's a digital representation of the way physical stores interact with OEMs.
It's not exactly like that. Kroger and Safeway cannot prevent potato chips from being sold outside of Kroger and Safeway.
That's the whole point of the conversation here, don't know how you're missing it. Apple and Google are the textbook definitions of illegal monopolies, Kroger and Safeway are not.
Maybe not within smart phones, but the app store has nothing to do with the success of Uber aside from forced inclusion in the transaction.
Believe it or not, software went decades being successfully purchased and installed by customers before app stores came along. Even on the Blackberry.
Personally, I am far more likely to try out a subscription if I can do it through the app store, as I don't have to hand over my credit card details, and I know I'll be able to easily cancel.
> and an app store to help developers get customers.
Apple strictly enforces limits and restrictions on users' devices that ensure that the App Store is the only way to get customers. Every other way is banned. Customers cannot get the apps they want without the App Store. Developers are able to find customers on their own, otherwise.
If you want to enter the mobile or tablet markets at all, you're forced to give either company 15% to 30% of your gross revenue. There's no choice, alternative or competition because all the competition is banned.
Personally, I don't think running an exclusive mobile app repository, and then forcing all apps to use Apple or Google's payment methods, should entitle either company to 15% to 30% of a company or developer's gross revenue.
Google doesn’t require anyone to pay Apple $100/year, nor does Google require anyone to buy Apple hardware.
So none of the costs you mention are relevant to the article we’re discussing.
And Google doesn’t run ‘an exclusive mobile app repository’. A dozen or more of the apps on my mobile are installed from F-droid, and Google does nothing to prevent those apps from working.
It also makes money by providing their apps and services a front row seat in mobile marketing heaven, on prime screen real estate.
Let's not weep yet for Google's Android hardships.
Stripe needs servers and bandwidth like everything else.
Apple earns ~20% of their revenue from all their services not just App Store [1]
Given they don't break out their App Store profit numbers I think you should provide your source.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...
1: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
(a) Provide a link to the source if you're going to throw numbers around.
(b) According to CNBC [1] Apple had App Store revenues of $64 billion in FY2021. Which at 30% = $19.2 billion and at 15% = $9.6 billion. All of which doesn't factor in any of the costs associated with running the store or acquiring all of the customers.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/10/apple-vs-epic-70percent-of-a...
The other thing I fee that‘s often overlooked is that paid app subsidize free apps.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
Will it though? Or will the fee just become another "premium" differentiator between the two? The average Android phone sells for $250, but that hasn't discouraged Apple from pricing iPhones at 3-5x that. Other than strong government regulation (or the threat of it), I don't see Apple ever willingly reducing the App Store tax.
https://www.apple.com/au/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-ap...
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...
Elaborate? Apple is not involved in the search market, and I don’t see how them not making as much money on their own platform benefits Google in any way.
Note: I still think the value that Google Play and App Store provide to developers is not worth the 30% (or 15% in this case), but just want to understand your reasoning.
I'm not sure how valid it is given the absolute mountain of cash Apple is sitting on.
So I think for sure people will still offer Apple Pay. The difference is that there'd be competition now, so Apple would be forced to reduce their margins to the minimum, maybe close to cost price to compete.
That's basically the point, the competition would drive prices down.
If not for the bulk discounts they must get, they would lose money at 30% of a $0.99 sale.
Ability to handle payment processing has high fixed costs and complexity. So you using a managed service by the big companies make sense, for a cut of the revenue.
At some revenue poing it makes sense to in-house it, so % cut doesn't really impact any big vendor with millions in revenues if they were not forced to use first party payment service for in app or store payments on the mobile platform
One-off purchases for large companies ($1m+) still attracts 30%.
A lot of smaller developers would benefit from this. Hopefully, some of the savings are passed on to users.
While the original 30% fee is BS. 15% Is reasonable to pay to get your application out there.
Otherwise your Brilliant idea in most cases is worthless if it’s not visible to majority of users.
I like the way that Apple has approached it where it’s capped for apps under 1M.
It’s simply not supported that the app store is as profitable as you state - the figure you’ve suggested is closer to the iPhone’s share of apple’s profit. Sources: fy21q3 & fy15q3 earnings statements.
> In the second week of the trial, in which the maker of “Fortnite” alleged monopolistic practices by Apple in federal court in Oakland, Calif., Epic called an expert witness — Ned Barnes of the Berkeley Research Group — to the stand.
> Barnes calculated that the App Store had hefty profit margins, which increased to 78% in 2019, up from 75% in 2018, and generated $22 billion in commissions for Apple last year.
[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-profitable-is-apples-a...
Apple make around 70-80B revenue per quarter, 22B in annual commission is around 6% of annual revenue…
That 22B figure doesn’t even touch on costs.
As developers, we don't even need app stores. They're an artifice that got shoved down our throat by trillion dollar mega corporations. A taxation clearinghouse. You can distribute the same program bytes from anywhere, most notably the web.
It's Steve Ballmer's old dream of taxing all software. There's just no point in it. It's massively unfair.
The excruciating review process adds insult to injury. And it makes fixing bugs a slow and stressful nightmare.
If smart phone manufacturers really want to protect customers, the best way to do that is to store signatures of known bad applications and provide solid permissions-based access to system resources.
Screw app stores.
Having a centralised place with reviews categories, updates etc. is very valuable.
The difference is that Palm, HP and Nokia didn't take a cut, and the stores themselves were based on open protocols that allowed users to add their own sources for apps. That resulted in excellent things like PreWare[1] and, in Maemo's case, enthusiast run apt repositories.
It's entirely possibly to have safe and open app stores that don't follow Apple's model. Apple's App Store model is implemented and maintained to protect the revenue it generates, and security has always been an afterthought.
The App Store model is about profits, and security is an afterthought that makes for good PR.
Apple is responsible for letting scams and fraud flourish on the iOS App Store[1]:
> That man’s name is Kosta Eleftheriou, and over the past few months, he’s made a convincing case that Apple is either uninterested or incompetent at stopping multimillion-dollar scams in its own App Store. He’s repeatedly found scam apps that prey on ordinary iPhone and iPad owners by luring them into a “free trial” of an app with seemingly thousands of fake 5-star reviews, only to charge them outrageous sums of money for a recurring subscription that many don’t understand how to cancel. “It’s a situation that most communities are blind to because of how Apple is essentially brainwashing people into believing the App Store is a trusted place,” he tells The Verge.
Apple is also responsible for distributing 500 million copies of Xcodeghost to users via the App Store[2]. Despite claiming that Android users are protected by Play Protect, the Play Store is the #1 vector for malware on Android[3].
It isn't 2003 anymore, operating system vendors have been taking security seriously for a while now. Abuse and malware are not a problem on macOS despite barely anyone using the Mac App Store to install apps. Same goes for Windows, it isn't Windows XP anymore, and despite nobody using the Microsoft Store, abuse and malware are much less of a problem than they were in the past.
The App Store model isn't necessary for security, it's only necessary to secure profits.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/21/22385859/apple-app-store-...
[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7bbmz/the-fortnite-trial-is...
[3] https://www.zdnet.com/article/play-store-identified-as-main-...
Geeks are very different audience from general public.
If I dropped their app distribution onto Windows it would also succeed there with the general mainstream public, in fact even more so, because of the garbage state for app management there.
HNers forget this quite often.
Actually the merchant takes practically ALL the risk and the credit company has relatively little. If a stolen card is used or fraud is perpetrated, typically the merchant takes the hit depending on the type and scope of the fraud. If there is a chargeback, that money is held indefinitely until there is a resolution, but the merchant needs to dispute and prove that the product or service was rendered without any uncertainty, and much of the time the card company will favor the cardholder.
On top of that, the credit card processor will charge you the merchant a hefty chargeback fee regardless of resolution (as I recall, though they may reverse it if the decision ruled in your favor). Most of the time it's not worth the effort to dispute smaller chargebacks for smaller amounts. It's fair amount of work that just may not be worth fighting.
If your business is deemed in any way high risk, your merchant fees can be as high as 30% or more, but those are unusual edge cases.
When dealing with consumers directly that's the inherent risk and overhead.
That doesn't really justify a slice of subscription revenue though.
Wholeheartedly disagree. I download software on Linux and Mac frequently without ever having it reviewed.
I buy physical products that have sensors. These don't get scrutinized.
If we truly need a "health inspector", then it should be a third party. Not the mafia that makes the device and frequently launches competing apps and features.
And it seems totally uneven that websites can access and deal in the same data, yet they escape review.
It's an invented charade that is brutally unfair.
Android users don't care that they're being tracked, as long as it doesn't break their app or drain their battery too fast.
Google cares that apps track users, because (a) it allows apps to end run around their own ad offering & (b) it provides Apple with a talking point to bludgeon them about the head with.
Review is a PR measure masquerading as a user benefit, in order to technically enforce a centralized toll gate.
But yes, this requires knowledge of what you are doing.
So most people rightfully choose the playstore - and maintaining (and curating) the playstore requires work. So I also think it is fair, if google gets a cut. But 30% and also 15% is just cutthroat price range.
Depends on the payment processor/mechant bank/payment network/issuing bank and the fixed fees vs transaction amount. 3-5% is in range for a card not present transaction for a low dollar amount with not a lot of volume.
If Google or Apple gets a good deal on credit card processing because of volume and takes that plus a little extra to pay for their services, that's a lot more fair than 15-30%; high volume developers might want to shave that margin a bit more, but low and medium probably wouldn't bother.
I also work for a global tech company whereby that approach isn't needed as we have our own payment processing to handle that, but as a part-time indie, I want the option of deferring to the stores for payments.
Developers who don't want to set up payments outside of the app store can choose not to do that. But that choice should not prevent the developers who do want to offer a lower-cost payment processing option to their customers from doing so.
For high volume merchants.
For mom and pop shops they usually pay a fixed fee + %. For transactions under $5 they can lose money on a sale which is why you quite often see minimum purchase prices or discounts when paying with cash. In some states however there are no laws protecting small businesses and processor contractors usually have a clause forbidding merchants from steering customers away from paying with a card.
A local baobao shop by me offers a 10% discount for cash transactions, that tells me they make more money offering a 10% discount than accepting a card. When I was in Georgia my drycleaner told me she didn't make money on any card transaction under $25.
> In addition to the structure of the De Beers cartel, the main force behind this dominance for many years has been the role played by governments. It is possible for a cartel to continue if there is a governing body above that can enforce agreement. Through continuously changing its stance toward corporations, the South African government and other governments essentially protected the companies that were providing them with easily and centrally collected tax revenues. Governments have frequently imposed output quotas and have used legislation, such as the Illicit Diamond Buying laws (IDB), to protect these companies from black markets and their effects on pricing. (As a comparison, one of the weaknesses of OPEC is that it is a cartel of governments over which no other actor can impose control, whereas De Beers has formed a cartel of companies and has often successfully lobbied governments to enforce cooperation on its behalf).
> This argument of government-forced cooperation held while Africa was the dominant supplier of diamonds, but it no longer has the complete stranglehold that it once did. As the cartel has not yet disintegrated, however, other reasons must also exist. Researchers believe that De Beers exists as a monopoly to maximize profits, not just to maintain them. Hence, it is in the members’ interest to stay within the cartel rather than go it alone.
It's however conceivable that a monopoly like De Beers could survive even in a free market because they seem to be the optimal solution to a coordination problem where everyone's (including the consumer's and the prospective competitor's) incentives are aligned. The paper explains:
> Second, the demand for diamonds is not typical and must be analyzed using Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption. This theory replaces the traditional downward-sloping demand curve with one that is upward-sloping, suggesting that the higher the price of an item, the higher the demand. This phenomenon would imply that higher prices have a dual effect on the profits of a company, first, through higher margins and, second, through increased sales. Therefore, it is in a company’s best interest to maintain high prices. For diamonds in particular, this means that the perception of desirability associated with diamonds is critical to the life of the industry as a whole and that if the price of diamonds falls, the overall demand for them will follow. Therefore, it is again in the interest of the individual players in this industry to “play nice” and cooperate, since cheating the cartel will actually lower their profits instead of raising them.
[1]: https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfile...
Monopolists rent seeking is never justifiable. Hopefully these things will be banned worldwide.
Google also includes a few services apps use (eg google play services) which they could disable if an app isnt bought through google play. Their alternative might be to monetize their current services.
Sounds like we've got a healthy competitive marketplace. Great.
I am 100% OK with Google, Apple, or whoever charging whatever price they want to charge for using their app store services. They are, after all, providing all of the infrastucture for software delivery, updates, payments, etc. Not to mention giving you access to a massive potential userbase.
The problem is them preventing you (the developer) from allowing the user to use other forms of payment processing within the app itself. Apple is the worst offender of this. Google obviously allows side-loading of apps and other app stores for Android while Apple does not. Apple goes so far as to prevent you from linking to a website with an external payment option, or to even suggest in text within your app that there are ways to subscribe/pay outside of the app store.
They claim it's about the user experience and security, which is legitimate, but it's almost certainly about keeping those nice profit margins. It's within their right to charge what they want to use their store, but the restrictive nature of not allowing competition is wrong. If Apple would even allow sideloading of apps this wouldn't really be an issue. They could keep things as-is and just tell developers "Don't like the app store rules? That's fine, but you can't list your app here. Good luck in the free market."
Because mobile computing has become the primary form of computing for many (most?) people, the fact that these few companies have so much power about what people can and can not do on their own devices is scary.
Edit: At a minimum, they could require developers to make all payments available via the official app store payment platform, in addition to any other types of payment processing they want to do. This would let the customer decide and would get rid of any regulatory concerns about monopolies. And you know what? I bet most customers would still pay via the official app store/play store payment method, but at least the other options are there. I also think the policy of not allowing apps from outside the app store to be installed is insane. It's your device, you should be able to use it how you want to.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/10/the-revolution-st...
We're now at the point where a chat program that does nothing more than one from 1995 is using 300mb ram minimum, basic animations lag and no style mathes the other because nothing even tries to adhere to any centrally defined theme, only to what that projects specific ui designer thinks looks best.
Here is a very detailed post on this – https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/
Anybody is free to create a site listing PWAs. The fact that PWAs aren’t listed in the App Store does not mean that there is no way of discovering PWAs.
> There is no "Add to Home Screen" button (apps can only tell users to open safari settings and do it themselves).
This is wrong. You press the Action button in the main Safari toolbar and select Add to Home Screen. You don’t have to go into Safari settings at all.
> The cache limit is a tiny 50MB, which will be purged in 7 days.
That’s not correct. The seven day limit is for websites when you use Safari but don’t visit the website. PWAs added to the Home Screen get their own counter separate to Safari, and since every time you open it you visit the site, the usage limit is effectively infinite.
The idea of applications on the phone was something blindingly obvious to me ever since my first Nokia 3410 I had as a kid. The phone had a bunch of distinct functionalities other than making calls, which you could invoke through a menu. Why shouldn't I be able to add new ones? Write new ones myself?
Installing custom software was later normalized when phones gained ability to run J2ME applets. By the time iPhone was conceived, it was an expected feature.
He was fixated on having complete control.
Someone develops a webapp, I can make my own phone and anyone who wants to continue using all the webapps they were using in Safari on their iPhone can come over and do that in the browser on my phone.
People develop native apps for the iPhone, and suddenly leaving the iPhone means leaving behind all those apps.
It sounds crazy but at the time the wild west of apps on the desktop meant that the user experience was pretty poor and allowed malware to explode.
It has been said that Microsoft's failure to fix these issues is really what drove web application development. No one realized a viable alternative was to lock down the device to a single store/publisher and then take a 30% cut.
Now that WebApps probably could replace nearly all native apps, it's in Apple's best interest to not fully support PWAs, WASM, etc. because the app store is so lucrative.
Nah, what drove web development was 100% ease of deployment. No more dealing with installers that don't work and people who don't know how to use them, the browser is already there; no more dealing with the pain of rolling out updates, you push to your own server and it's done. And you don't have to care about Windows stack vs Mac stack with completely different teams, a few css/js tweaks and you're done. Sun understood the issue and tried to put up a fight with their Java Web Start, but in the end the JRE still required an installer, with all the related issues. MS eventually got something like that working seamlessly, but it was 15 years too late.
The whole "we can fix a bug and deploy new version to everyone while still on the phone with the customer who reported the problem" thing was just a bait.
There is no need to be always cynically focused on "evil money", often it's just pragmatism.
According to Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, the tech guru was opposed to allowing third-party to run natively on iPhone…
…Others in the know disagree with Isaacson's story and contend third-party apps were always on the iPhone roadmap; Jobs and company were simply not comfortable with releasing an SDK at launch.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/07/10/the-revolution-st...
Nor did his wife turn down her friendship with the Epsteins.
There's no need to volunteer to write hagiographies for billionaires, they pay PR firms to do it for them.
What “people” are you referring to? The millions of people, like yours truly, who’ve made the conscious decision to pay Apple because of their App Store model.
I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone.
So, I don’t understand when others speak for “people” like me who’ve voiced their opinion via purchase. There’s a long list of moments where I’ve been over-the-moon, downright happy with Apple’s payment and subscription experience. It’s been a breath of fresh air vs. dealing with independent providers where, oh, I have to cancel by calling your customer support center? Oh, no, you need me to send an email instead? With a photo of my ID? Oh, you accidentally continued charging me because the subscription wasn’t canceled? That’s ok, but why did you double the price of the subscription without so much as an email notifying me? Oh, you sent an email titled “Thanks for being a customer” and buried it in the addendum, gotcha. Yeah, I’m ok, I’ll stick with Apple’s payments and subscriptions system on my phone.
Those are all real experiences, by the way, that I’m happy to say I haven’t had with Apple for the past decade.
As a reminder, Android requires manually ticking a checkbox before allowing sideloading. Sideloading is a choice, not a requirement. If you don't want to do it, don't enable it.
Alternative solution are convoluted because Apple makes it that way, it's by design. You are paying more than you need to, and developers get less then they should.
People complain about 1% surcharge on a visa, which is made clear before each purchase. Apple takes 30% and they hide the fact from consumers. But it's all so smooth, you hardly notice you're spending money it's so convenient. Is that so surprising when the company controlling the OS also controls how you pay for products they didnt make?
> People complain about 1% surcharge on a visa, which is made clear before each purchase.
This is utterly false. I've never seen a physical nor online POI specifically say "price includes x% fee paid to credit card processor". I imagine Visa and MC explicitly forbid you from making it a line-item as well.
As for iPhone user’s. It’s obvious to all that Apples resources allow them to create the best devices on the market with the biggest library of apps that people want. Their monopoly on the market is not some green light to exploit customers and developers.
Going into the debate of Apple vs Google is already missing the point, both are part of the same mobile conglomerate.
> I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone.
I want that, phones are just computers like any others and having two companies control the worldwide app market without any competition is terrible. It's not just me who want that, it's that society and the global economy needs that.
Even on Linux you can see that this "moderation" is beneficial. No software will land in the repositories that spy on the users, and its uncommon to install software outside those repos that ship with your distro.
Which demonstrates that this works perfectly well without restricting users from installing software outside of the repositories.
You want the App Store to exist. You don't want it to be mandatory.
You should not buy their excuses about so-called security, it always has been about control.
Settings -> AppleID -> Subscriptions?
It’s on your phone? You don’t have to use iTunes at all? I wouldn’t have even thought to use iTunes? Unsubscribing is the easiest thing in the world - much easier than PayPal. It’s right there in the Settings app.
I generally agree with this sentiment, but still feel that the fee % itself is a significant part of the problem and worth to tackle it in parallel.
My concern is that Google/Apple have lots of direct/indirect advantages against its payment competitors as platform holders and I'm 90% sure that they're willing to exercise that position to keep the dominance of their payment solutions. And I think they have a good chance of winning. We need to push them in all possible directions even if some approaches don't work.
Did it occur to you that if a user is not the final authority who decides which apps should run on the device, he is not really owning the device, but merely leasing it, under some strict terms?
Consumers can continue to use app-store payments if they wish (and I bet the vast majority would), but developers and companies can no longer complain about Apple's monopoly over payment processing.
Also who is to say the developer would charge less? Let's say, for example, a company called ezpay charges $1 per transaction. If an IAP costs $10, they make $7 off the user who buys via Apple, and $9 off the user that buys via ezpay API in the app. They could lower the ezpay price to $8 and still only make $7, but why bother?
Only the tiniest % of HN idealists will pay 30% extra to have it go through Apple.
Google One already charges you less if you subscribe via web or android. They just haven't been allowed to advertise this fact in the iOS app.
Also, it should be telling that if you are using an App which only offers: Sketchy Payment Processor, that the app itself is sketchy, so just go use another app.
Flat per-transaction fees to cover operating costs is more acceptable. But Apple might make less money in that scheme. On the other hand, more developers might be willing to write apps for iOS if they weren't getting gouged by such high Apple Store fees, so Apple might even come out ahead if they reformed their pricing and payments policy.
I would certainly enjoy F-Droid for iOS.
One major kink in this idea is that it breaks the free tier model, since paid apps are essentially subsidizing free ones. If you can use any payment processor in-app, then developers will make their apps nominally "free" for App Store purposes, and then use the payment processor of their choice in-app, circumventing Apple's ability to collect any fee whatsoever. So how do you address this problem without charging every developer, even if they were otherwise willing to give away their app?
> So how do you address this problem without charging every developer, even if they were otherwise willing to give away their app?
Aren't they already requiring developers to pay a fee to have a developer account? I'm sure there are ways they could recoup the costs of providing a service to the publishers of free apps (normally, a free market would converge on the actual price of providing this service). But they will only look for a solution when forced to, why give away a stable source of income?
Of course, they would not be satisfied with that arrangement because no company has ever been satisfied with making a ton of money if it is possible for them to make some more. But that certainly doesn't mean the model can't work or that if there were regulation to this effect that it wouldn't still be in Apple's enormous interest to continue to operate the App Store.
They could also just require developers to pay them a set % of gross even when using third-party payment processors. There is precedent for this, for example Sony requires this in order to approve cross-play between Playstation and other platforms. It could also be treated as a royalty model where you give them say 5% of your gross revenue to use the iOS platform and the 5% is baked into the normal 30% store cut (Unreal Engine works this way.)
Or they can compete in the free market and offer their payment gateway for a competitive fee, or they can do what google is doing and allow third party app installs.
So how is this different than App Store policies?
But on Android neighbourhood you can sell in other stores, or even create your own store, if you don't like to use android's app store or pay them 30% or use their payment system.
Some people living in Apple neighborhood says that they prefere the Apple app store monopoly because they can be sure that Apple store is safe to shop and there is only good products.
The consumer choosed to buy a product (iOS device) that only allows you to install for 1 App Store.
If I own a TiVo, can I install an app from anywhere other than TiVo App Store?
And if you did, there’s plenty of examples where it would void your warranty. Eg John Deere, Tesla, etc can only be serviced by the manufacturer otherwise it void warranty.
Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act says otherwise.
App developers are bad actors and should not be trusted to control payment information, refund policies, or subscription management. They will abuse all of them, and they already abuse the limited tools they have for in app payments.
Payment flow needs to be controlled by an entity that is trying to protect the buyer, not the developer
1. Regulatory and technology changes are making advertising a less effective business model. It's both more expensive to acquire users and less profitable to run ads. So each week more companies are switching to one-time IAP or subscriptions as a primary revenue source. This change will further accelerate this transition.
2. A lot of apps sell digital content at a low margin. For example, Spotify and other music apps have to pay record labels for content. You can also consider marketplaces for user generated content that have this issue. Apple and Google's high service fees have prevented a large category of businesses from existing on the app store. Yes, they could try to direct users to pay through the browser, but anti-steering policies made this nearly impossible for companies without an established brand.
0: https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2812853?hl=en
And I think Google has always been taking 15% on the first million revenue on services. Which wasn't clear in the post.
The 10% changes is welcome. But may be too little too late in terms of legal and regulation.
Here are important benefits compared to previously made changes by google:
1. Subscription revenue share drops to 15% instead of 30% without 1 million/year limit.
2. E-Books and Music Streaming services will pay 10% instead of 30%.
This is great news not only for developers on google Play but also iOS Developers, it will put pressure on Apple to cut Apple Tax further.
For example
* Response leaves out historic data (i.e. a subscription doesn't show it was paused, had a trial, etc. once they're over)
* Fetching the subscription state frequently returns data inconsistent with previous results (e.g. the start date of the subscription keeps changing, the expiry date keeps jumping around), so piecing together a subscription's history by combining versions observed at different times is practically impossible
* Each subscription is a singly linked list, but doesn't give you enough information to actually follow the link. And it's from newest to oldest
* Authentication is a mess (it's half integrated into the google cloud, but not really)
* Settings changes take about ~24h to take effect
I still think I'm missing something, but my StackOverflow question on it remains unanswered (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48606203/list-all-play-s...).
> That's something every other subscription API provides
I don't think Apple and Amazon provide such an API either.
I launched an app for a B2B SAAS service that clients paid ten of thousands of dollars a year for. We put the app which was secondary to the web dashboard which the clients used mostly during business hours in the Apple App Store and on Google Play without mentioning any payment in the product description which both allowed. When I first submitted the app Apple said we had to remove the link to the payment form on our website after which they were cool with as long as it wasn't on the app description. We billed the users and maintained the accounts through the web application and web dashboard without giving any money to Google or Apple.
Is this still allowed today?
3.1.3(c) Enterprise Services: If your app is only sold directly by you to organizations or groups for their employees or students (for example professional databases and classroom management tools), you may allow enterprise users to access previously-purchased content or subscriptions. Consumer, single user, or family sales must use in-app purchase.
I’d much rather pay Apple/Google a fixed amount per download and per app update than pay them a lifetime cut of my subscriptions.
"When we started Android and Google Play more than a decade ago, we made a bet that a free and open mobile ecosystem could compete with the proprietary walled gardens that dominated the industry."
Do people today really believe that "the industry was dominated by proprietary walled gardens" in the past? The whole thing pretty much started with iOS and Android (Android isn't exactly an open ecosystem compared to Windows, Linux or even macOS).
For anything that competes with the platform owner's paid apps (eg. Spotify, Netflix, Sweat with Kayla, Audible/Kindle, Fastmail etc compete with Apple Music, YouTube, Apple Fitness+, Google Books, iCloud+ Mail etc) - they should be allowed to use their own payment service in their apps just like Uber and Doordash do.
Anything else should be no more than a 15% cut.
Overall this is a good thing as long as it doesn't take away from the anti trust cases made against these companies.
Do they mean only 3% of dev accounts who ever published something became sustained? Nice corp speak!
It doesn't take much effort to make a dev account and publish Android apps. The vast majority of Android apps are free, ad supported, and made by hobbyists.
If there was real competition in the mobile app distribution and payments markets, and not just Google and Apple working in tandem to protect their profits, then consumers would benefit from increased efficiency and lower costs when it comes to how they get and pay for apps.