"We don't charge anything as the platform, but Apple gets 30 percent for doing nothing," one of the executives reportedly fumed."
Uh, Apple's servers hosted and distributed hundreds of millions of copies of your apps. For free.
Apple is clearly doing the right thing here. They can't charge developers 30% to sell apps and content through their platform, then allow one developer to skirt the rule by calling it "tipping".
Tencent can just man up and pay the thirty percent like the rest of us have to do.
The difference is that if Tencent pulls WeChat from the appstore, Chinese people will (grudgingly) leave the iPhone for some Android model. They need WeChat more than any other app. Actually Tencent could ask Apple money for continuing their app on their platform.
> Apple is clearly doing the right thing here. They can't charge developers 30% to sell apps and content through their platform, then allow one developer to skirt the rule by calling it "tipping".
Tencent can just man up and pay the thirty percent like the rest of us have to do.
I think you're confused and you don't know what the case is about.
By the way, I didn't knew that Apple Developer Program was free? Guess what it is included in the yearly price.
> And I know exactly what it's about. No one is getting "tips" without providing services or content through the app.
So, you would be glad to pay 30% of your banking transactions to Apple, isn't? Because this case is exactly the same as Paypal, banking applications or booking applications
Great, we agree these tips are compensation for content being offered through WeChat, now you want to argue whether Apple's 30% is reasonable.
I don't need Apple to do my banking and I don't need to pay Apple if I want to sell apps, I can sell through Cydia, or write apps on platforms that let me distribute over the internet.
If I want to sell to iPhone/Ipad Apple customers through the App store is the only time I need to pay. 30% is an amazing deal, given historically for software distribution you'd pay Ingram Micro D 50% of revenues, and still have to pay for disks/duplication/packaging and pay stores and Ingram Micro D to promote you.
Uh, Apple's servers hosted and distributed hundreds of millions of copies of your apps. For free.
Apple is clearly doing the right thing here. They can't charge developers 30% to sell apps and content through their platform, then allow one developer to skirt the rule by calling it "tipping".
Tencent can just man up and pay the thirty percent like the rest of us have to do.