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Comment by floydnoel | Hacker News Reader

i wonder how much these changes are costing Apple vs how much they make in Europe. would be interesting to know if there's an amount of compliance costs and complexity that could see Apple leave the EU market!

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The threshold is nowhere near close.

You forget that these companies already operate in China which is a massive pain in the backside for all involved.

The only reason why a company might threaten to pull out is if they wanted to stop other countries getting similar ideas.

China isn’t threatening Apple’s entire App Store model though.

The point of the EU is to protect consumers and small businesses, not the business of multi trillion dollar market leaders who engage in anti-competitive practices.

Maybe Apple should focus back on making money through innovation instead of coasting on rent seeking.

If EU is so good at promoting innovation and competition, why couldn’t they compete at all in hardware, software, and AI?

If they’re so good at dissuading gate keepers, then why is LVMH everywhere and so dominant in luxury goods? Why is it that every single glasses shop in every mall is owned by Luxottica no matter the brand.

The truth is that EU is not good at promoting competition. They’re good at preventing innovation. They’re good at protectionist policies.

How many more cookie prompts do people have to click because of idiotic EU laws?

I recommend the article “Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39602417

> why couldn’t they compete at all in hardware,

Like Arm? Or raspberry pi? (Both existed pre-exit)

> software,

Too many companies to list.

> and AI?

Like Mistral?

> How many more cookie prompts do people have to click because of idiotic EU laws?

It's up to the companies. Every time you see a banner it means the company values selling your information more than pissing you off. We could have no banners right now.

Cookie prompts is the best example of bad faith compliance. Please inform yourself and don't spread this narritive further.

IMO if anything it's the opposite. EU could have made law to respect DNT header if they wanted privacy but they won't because it would hurt "their" companies. Instead they tried to be super vague and preferentially sue companies who they have qualms with and the companies which they could get money from.

My previous company hired a lawyer from EU for sorting out GDPR, and even according to him the law didn't prevented all things which hurts privacy like a normal person will assume.

I am once again posting the EU official site using cookie pop-ups https://european-union.europa.eu/index_en

>The 3 types of first-party cookie we use are to: >(...) >gather analytics data (about user behaviour).

Well they do collect user data using third party services. A bit disappointing, but banners seem to be necessary in this case.

Quoting OP

> Cookie prompts is the best example of bad faith compliance

If cookie prompts are used by both by the official EU and GDPR sites then that was clearly the intent of the law.

You can’t argue with cookie prompt lovers. They love clicking on those useless buttons.

https://gdpr.eu is an interesting site to visit on the matter, surely they have the best and most compliant implementation.

https://i.imgur.com/Ftuv74P.png

They kind of do with WeChat.

Example?

Anyone can make an app like WeChat with mini programs inside. No one has exceeded because people in the west simply don’t want that ui.

Virtually all Meta and Google services are blocked in China. Only Apple has significant consumer presence (and manufacturing) there.

Not for a lack of trying (at least on the google side). Took google getting hacked and IP stolen to fully move out of china

Google didn't 'fully' move out of China; it still has offices there, doing some business as usual.

I'd say that it's realistically not possible for any amount of cost or complexity of compliance to make them leave the EU market.

Apple has a vested interest in being able to offer their services worldwide. If one part of the world is not included, companies in that part will have a much easier time to develop and grow their own alternatives. If these alternatives gain enough traction in that part they might then be able to threaten Apples services globally.

Therefore I'd assume that even if they will only break even (or operate at a manageable loss) they would still stay in the EU.

The EU is a huge market of people with deep pockets, I conjecture the break even point is not anywhere on the horizon.

At some point control of one's own business future balances out a certain level of profit.

Have you seen how much they all bend over backwards for China?

As far as I know, only Apple and Microsoft operate in China.

At least iCloud is run by a third party and not Apple (GCBD). Similar to how Blizzard does with their games and why World of Warcraft disappeared over night. Important distinction to make when it comes to privacy and security (there’s none) and how Apple washes their hands clean while keeping the Chinese government happy.

It is pretty much a requirement if you want to do business in mainland China.

Firefox also had a set of China-owned servers to sync data from Chinese users to.

(“Had” because I think they officially stopped the relationship with Mozilla China)

Meta doesn’t. Their products have never been available in China.

Probably because the Chinese market is already full of Chinese social media companies. How do they expect to compete if they enter? It's not 2004 anymore where starting a social media on Harvard campus was a big ticket.

I also wonder if personel/talents/headcount to handle all that crap can become an issue. VPs (CEOs even) distracted with compliance etc.

Ones crap is anothers feature.

When all they need to do for compliance is to enable EU users to install apps without Apple as a middle-man then not much in the way of "personell/talents/headcount to handle all that crap" is actually necessary. What's costing them resources (and eventually money in the form of fines) is not complying.

You are vastly oversimplifying the issue. It’s not like there’s a bit that Apple can flip to just let EU citizens sideload apps.

I’d argue you’re vastly over complicating it.

There’s already mechanisms to side load, and install IPAs..

Why would it be more complicated?

It feels like some people don't imagine these companies to be ready for compliance. As if they don't have all the knobs ready to turn on a per-region/country/state basis as soon as the law changes and it becomes possible to lose even the smallest amount in stock value.

You would not only need to consider how much it brings in but also how much it would cost to pull back. They would have to unwind a ton of legal structures, get rid of employees and live up to contracts that are already in place. This would take years and would be more than enough time for competition to smoothly make a transition.

Then you are also thinking of Apple as some kind of US entity. It's a faceless shareholder owned business. The shareholders would somehow need to agree to leave a still very profitable region. They would only agree to that if they think the company can force other regions or the EU to not legislate Apple. It's a risky strategy that could work but I don't think you can get the majority of shareholders to try it. Even then it could fail and just bankrupt the company.

You also have to consider how much it costs to actually comply. The board would probably much rather Apple comply and keeps selling iPhones and services in the EU vs not getting ANY profits at all from their currently second largest region in the world.

Remember how the US tech market went into layoff spree just for a slight dip in profits and slightly higher rates?

Think what does same investors will do to the company that leaves a 300mil people market over a legal spat.

Think about all of the innovations those terminated people will bring to the market when they are no longer shackled in golden handcuffs.

They mass hired too many unqualified people in 2021.

Yeah, and if Apple stops selling to EU suddenly bunch of Apple software artisans will be marked as "unqualified" as well for people that uncritically eat that kind of BS.

That would be a net positive as we would all benefit from new players that would emerge and fill that void. Obviously your question was rhetorical and this won't happen.

New players emerging in the high-end smartphone space? You seriously believe that a comparable player to *Apple* is going to emerge any time in the next decade? Lol

Normally, no. But in the hypothetical situation of Apple leaving the EU up for grabs for new players, maybe.

$94B

https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/

Did the math, 24.5% of their global 2023 revenue.

And Apple's iPhone market share in Europe (yes, the EU is not Europe) has been steadily growing since 2019:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/639928/market-share-mobi...

Apple would be crazy for leaving the EU. Even the suggestion would probably lead to a shareholder revolt and the removal of some executives.

If they leave the EU market, Android immediately becomes a much bigger focus for every app developer which can have an effect on the quality of apps available on the app store around the world.

Android is already the dominant mobile OS in Europe by market share. Why would quality increase by going from dominant to more dominant?

Companies might decide to stop bothering with ios apps altogether, which could have an effect in USA as well eventually.

Two things: iOS has been eating into Android marketshare in Europe since 2019:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/639928/market-share-mobi...

However, more importantly, iPhone users have more disposable income [1][2]. So, if Apple would pull from the EU, all those iPhone users with a lot of disposable income would be in the market for Android phones and apps, creating a lot of opportunities in the Android market.

[1] There are various studies, e.g.: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iphone-users-spend-...

[2] If you look at the most popular Android phones, they are often dominated by cheaper models, e.g. Samsung's A lineup. See e.g. current Android usage in France: https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-phones-tablets-by...

These DMA like changes are now coming from everywhere. It is just that EU has teeth, not to ignore and usually moves first.

California has adopted GDPR, there are ongoing probes in the US just last week, etc.

Time is up for regulation-free business in IT. We had 50 years of freedom (compared to let us say: drugs, medical devices, cars, airplanes, ...). It is normal cycle for a market

> We had 50 years of freedom

More “Wild West gold rush” than “freedom”

I think for many people that is the same ;). But I agree with your differentiation.

> Time is up for regulation-free business in IT. We had 50 years of freedom (compared to let us say: drugs, medical devices, cars, airplanes, ...)

This is an odd reading of the history, tbh. The US regulators were generally more active on competition in the industry in the 90s than today; see the Microsoft and Intel investigations, for instance.

A quarter of Apple’s total revenue comes from the EU (with Apple’s average profit margin of ~40%), but only 7% of the app store revenue. Which means that even if Apple gave up on all app store revenue from the EU, they wouldn’t lose that much. In any case, the resources they put into compliance is certainly much, much less than a quarter of their total resources.

I doubt they would leave the EU. I do think it is expected that they will design their products or features with the EU in mind and probably not even ship specific things in that region to avoid risk of being micromanaged / product managed by authorities.

Apple would first have to determine if it’s worth continuing to act like petulant children instead of just complying. They could not reasonably classify what they’re taking on now as simply “compliance expenses”. They’re doing it BECAUSE they see the worth in fighting back.

I don't think it's that unusual for companies to have wildly different margins in different markets. Apple's margins leave quite a lot of room for a market to still be worth pursuing.

I mean, the US is also pursuing competition investigations into Apple; if the strategy is to just flee anywhere that the regulators ask them mean questions, then they're probably realistically looking at only operating in developing nations, and not all of those.

And that would literally mean that the probe was warranted.

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