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Comment by giobox | Hacker News Reader

> those that do mostly have to pay 15%

This case only concerns Apple's App Store fees before 2020; it was a blanket 30% charge for paid apps until they introduced those changes following the whole Epic Games legal saga etc.

Apple are not paying a penalty for anything after 2020 when the new rules allowing those with lower turnover to pay 15% came into effect etc.

> It’s only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that need to pay 30%

During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.

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> During the first 12 years of the App Store, everyone paid 30%.

This is still not correct. The original claim was “every single business on the planet”. That’s ridiculously overstated.

Even if you massively narrow the scope to only businesses that have iOS apps that make money directly through the app, it’s still not true. The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps.

Take Uber, for instance. They make vast amounts of money through their iOS app. They do not have to pay Apple 30%, or 15%, or anything beyond the basic $99/yr developer account fee. They absolutely do not have to pay 30% for access to the platform.

Or Spotify, a common complainant, who pays Apple $0 because they only sign up accounts on their website.

> The 30% specifically applies to buying digital goods and services through iOS apps

This is not correct at all and grossly misrepresents how Apple collects revenues on the store - the 30% applied to the list price of any paid app as well.

Prior to 2020, if your app had a price tag on the app store, you paid 30% of said price to apple on every sale. There is no ifs, no buts, no lower rate for smaller players like today. You had a price tag, you paid 30%, whether you sold 100m copies or 5.

The decision taken by the CAT here concerns the fee for paid apps (what they call the distribution charge) as well as in app fees, the latter of which had some exemptions for specific transaction types from the likes of Amazon, Uber etc (but famously not Spotify or Epic Games, or the Amazon Kindle app etc etc...). The "distribution charge" did not.

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