But yes, it would be fair for Apple to ask for 30% because others are free to offer the same service for less, and you as a consumer of that service have a choice between them - which will eventually force Apple to bring its commission down.
Of course, I think most money comes from IAPs, not app downloads. The issue then is whether Apple would be forced to open the payment APIs, or if apps would need to implement a separate solution.
For example if my bank implements the payment provider API, then let me use that. All the other apps need to care about is a payment request method which can be satisfied with whatever payment provider I have picked.
Apps would be able to ask the provider how much they’re gonna get after the payment processes etc, and decide if they want to reject it or not.
The problem is large companies bundle too much market power together. If you want to avoid paying App Store fees currently you have to pull off a Herculean effort no company in existence is capable of.
Stepping back to the point, I'm guessing 99%+ of Telegram users decided to use Telegram for reasons outside of the App Store. Seems ridiculous that Apple has any claim to the income those apps generate.
Maybe if US or EU wanted to fix this (without forcing apple to allow 3rd party installs), a solution might be to just get rid of 'free' apps. Say every app costs $1 to install (if kept for 12 months) and 10c a year to provide updates - and then it's up to the app dev to cover the costs to Apple if they want it to be "free" to the user.
Oh and on the front page you get like the exact same selection of apps on the thousandth “our productivity picks” list.. I think they could probably significantly increase their app store revenue not by increasing the price, but by actually showing the users apps they would actually want to download..
A similar example would be gaming consoles. The console makers definitely take a cut of all the games that are released on their platform
Ref?
On the contrary, it's likely that getting rid of the Apple Tax would mean needing to significantly reduce development and maintenance of the software.
Think also of how the incentives work: If Apple is paid only when people buy a new phone, that adds pressure to shorten the lifespan of the software on the phone. If Apple is paid on an ongoing basis as the phone is used, this pressure is reduced, leading to longer-life phones.
https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-funds/sectors/sp500-compa...
> Apple alone last week reported sitting on $202.5 billion in cash and investments. That's 7.4% of all the S&P 500's cash. And it's up nearly 4% from 2021.
But also.. over the past several years I've grown to regard all new features as "god, _of course_ computers should be able to do that". So from my point of view iOS is neither "feature-complete" nor even "good enough". I'm annoyed that the future is coming much more slowly than it should, but I'm still thankful to Apple that it's coming.
One tiny example: "Lift object from background" seems like a gimmick, but in my head it's more like a completely natural feature that we just didn't have for whatever reason. For me, images are very naturally composed of _things_. All those standalone features like "face recognition", "dog breed recognition", "plant recognition", "lift object from background", "search by location" should just be one feature: the phone should see photos as collections of things in space, and it should know what those things are, because I know what those things are. Eh. One day we'll get there.
In North America which is in a different universe in this regard compared to the rest of the world. Where I'm from, carriers sell SIM cards and that's it. Postpaid plans aren't a thing. You buy your phone separately in an electronics store, for full price. This applies to iPhones as well.
Another example would be gaming consoles. The console makers definitely take a cut of all the games that are released on their platform
Yes, because I have no idea why it is so apparently special. I do know that they sell kindles so cheaply because they hope people would be buying books from them.
> Another example would be gaming consoles.
Except those are never marketed as general-purpose pocket computer devices like iPhones are. They are appliances. Getting your hands onto an SDK for a gaming console requires being a company, signing an NDA, and probably committing to lots of other conditions.
I also see many people saying that they won't install WhatsApp, and will only use iMessage.
As long as Apple competes directly with its own customers the platform will be unfair.
Like, honestly, do you think it is fair that google and apple could potentially display any sort of message to pretty much the whole of society? They are crazy powerful entities to the point where they are a new pillar of power next to the standard Legislature, Executive, Judiciary.
Google has put an incredible amount of effort into creating the delivery channel for websites/webapps. Not just as in "let's make a good browser", but "let's have feature parity with the OS, while still having the security and ease of use that the OS can't match". (There was a giant Chromium team googlesheet somewhere tracking which features are still missing, but I can't find it at the moment.)
For example: let's say you're selling stuff online. How does Chrome help you?
* HTTP/3 makes your site load faster. HTTP/3 stems from QUIC, which was a Google thing.
* CSS improvements mean that you can make it prettier. Google works on pushing new features into CSS.
* Advanced video/image codecs mean that you can show higher-quality pictures to your customers (assuming constant bandwidth). Google works on codecs.
* The very concept of evergreen browsers (I think Google has also put a lot of effort into making into happen?) means that you can save your money developing the website.
* At the checkout, Chrome autofills the card and/or lets the customer use Google Pay. The card is synced between the customer's devices, using Google's servers. This is good for you. Easier payments = better conversion rate for you.
* If the customer creates an account (which will help you sell them more things later), they might be logging in via Google. Or they might be using a password, which Google also autosyncs. Both options are good for you. It's you who derives extra money from the customer being able to easily log into their account and buy shoes etc.
* Finally, if the web was insecure, people would be more hesitant to use it to buy stuff. Google works on making the web more secure (Google Project Zero and just in general a ton of security work being put into Chromium).
This is not counting stuff that is Google and not Chrome per se.
I'm not going to say that you have to pay Google for simultaneously working on 10–20 different areas of infrastructure that enables you to sell things and services to people. And heck, they also benefit from it (because ads). But if tomorrow Google said "everybody who makes money on the internet have to give us a cut", I would feel like they actually have a good case for it, having contributed to very large chunks of the infrastructure that enables me to do business on the internet.
If they don’t like it they can focus on Android, and if iPhone users don’t like apple’s policies they can switch to android or pine phones as well.
They offer nothing except a walled garden.
Roughly $10 a month.
>as does marketing/discoverability
None of which the app store provides for you.
Some would try to woo developers by taking less of a cut, and unprofitable ones would go out of business. Eventually, an equilibrium would be reached.
For a $29.99/month subscription? No way.