Facebook has a native browser app. I think that is a pretty damn big economic difference as otherwise they wouldn't bother with a native app. That would be bad for the apple Brand to give Android an exclusive like that.
And? It's not illegal for a company to calibrate its business model to improve the bottom line. On the contrary in many cases they are legally forced to. Obviously while respecting other laws.
It's also not surprising that companies the size of Facebook, and others, have negotiated terms with Apple that smaller organisation will find difficult to match.
Perhaps what the smaller organisations and some developers need is to fund a lawyery folk to advocate / negotiate collectively on their behalf?
Edit: improved grammar by removing a typo and changing a word or two.
The lawyers aren't the reason those negotiations are successful.
Billions of users are the reason those negotiations are successful. Apple will be in a pickle if you can't get Facebook on an iPhone. Apple doesn't give two figs if someone can't get some shitty startup's app on an iPhone.
The ugly truth Apple doesn't want aired out in the open is that if not for apps like Twitter and Facebook, its own platform (iOS) is suddenly alot less appealing.
This in addition to the question of, what is 30% of all revenue FB makes via ad purchases in its iOS app? I don't think this number is published but easy to think it is in the billions (what is annual FB ad revenue? $60 billion something like that? How much of that is ad agencies (or ad buyers) managing ads via the iOS app?)
If Apple were to attempt to tax that... they'd suddenly give Facebook a several-billion-dollar reason to push the market to create a third mobile device platform and have it overtake iOS.
Well, if the FB app wasn't allowed on iOS any more, wouldn't FB do its level best to create a web experience (via iOS Safari) that's "good enough" instead?
