> "Subscription services like Spotify only pay 30% for the first year of each subscription. After that they pay 15%."
That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them.
> "Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers."
They charge a fee for it, I wouldn't consider it nominal - the ecosystem of apps also obviously benefits apple.
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I'm a huge Apple fan which is why I find this racket irritating, it worries me that it'll blow up in their face and we'll end up worse off.
I'd probably charge a (low) flat annual fee for app store distribution and that's it. Apple should be focused on making money with great products, not taxing devs they force through their channel.
> That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them.
Regulators don’t (yet I suppose) care about this because of opportunity cost. If I’m making $3/user/mo off your $10 subscription and I decide to enter the market and compete with you at then every user I steal and every user if not for me would have gone with you costs me $3/mo plus cost of providing them service. So if I’m able to still undercut you then either I’m ridiculously more efficient than you or you have fat margins.
Neither of these are true so something else is going on here. Either I’m bleeding money and this is some strategic play in which case it might be unfair for different reasons, or the market is segmented and we actually have two different customer bases with insignificant cross pollination.
You're ignoring opportunity cost which was the whole point here. You didn't say how much Apple was getting.
If Spotify charges $10 and pays Apple $3 then Spotify makes $7 and Apple makes $3.
If Apple enters the market and charges $10 then consider a user that would have otherwise went to Spotify. Spotify makes $0 and Apple makes $10 from the subscription but loses $3 from what they would have been paid from Spotify so Apple makes $7.
Apple has lots of advantages stemming from their control of the platform but "not having to pay the 30% fee" isn't one of them.
How many billions of dollars, over how many decades did Spotify spend developing that platform, OS and app distribution system? How many times did they almost go to the wall over the commercial risks that took?
Anyway as I already pointed out it’s effectively 15%, not 30%. Also the vast majority, over 99% (literally, I looked it up) of Spotify app users earn Apple nothing because they use it add supported and all the add revenue goes to Spotify.
Also the vast majority, over 99% (literally, I looked it up) of Spotify app users earn Apple nothing because they use it add supported and all the add revenue goes to Spotify.
They bought the phone from Apple, so Apple made their money.
Assuming you’re asking in good faith - Apple sells the hardware, they don’t make the software of other company’s apps.
They force companies to ship through their store, I think that is okay because it enables them to enforce quality standards for users.
I think it’s wrong for them to force this distribution model and then take a cut from every software company.
In the Spotify case Apple forces them to pay a tax and then Apple shows up in their own store priced the same where they obviously don’t have to pay a tax to themselves.
This is already way off topic to my post I'm wondering if I'm the right person you replied to. Let's stay focused on this, because I agree with most of your points in this thread.
Apple makes money off the sale of their iPhone from the user, with Spotify's existence here being completely irrelevant. Should Spotify be granted increased monetary entitlement to their app creation because of this physical material sale between Apple and the user?
I'd argue your question is a warped framing that confuses the issue in an attempt to be leading.
iPhone sale to user is irrelevant.
Apple forces distribution via their store and they force companies to pay a cut.
I think this is bad, but at least it's across all people that participate in the store.
Then Apple itself enters the market via the store selling the same product at the same price, but without the tax.
That's cheating. It has nothing to do with the 'physical material sale' - it has to do with requiring store distribution and taking a cut of competitors margins, but then entering yourself. It's not Spotify 'getting more of the pie' it's Spotify not having to pay an anti-competitive tax to the platform controller.
They can either allow distribution outside of the store (which I would not want) or they can remove the tax on apps that they directly compete with.
I'd prefer they remove the cut entirely and replace it with some low yearly fee for distribution.
That's still pretty extreme imo when you control the only store and you directly compete with them/undercut them.
> "Also their hosting of free apps for only a nominal developer registration fee is a huge boon to users and a lot of iOS developers."
They charge a fee for it, I wouldn't consider it nominal - the ecosystem of apps also obviously benefits apple.
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I'm a huge Apple fan which is why I find this racket irritating, it worries me that it'll blow up in their face and we'll end up worse off.
I'd probably charge a (low) flat annual fee for app store distribution and that's it. Apple should be focused on making money with great products, not taxing devs they force through their channel.
Keep the rules, lose the tax.