I hate to be That Guy, but Apple doesn't care how much money you keep vs. how much money you pay others when you accept In-App Payments. If you paid 90% of your IaP revenues to the power company instead of to content creators, Apple has no way of knowing this. It just would mean that your business has no hope of being profitable.
Fanhouse can still pass IaP revenues onto their customers ("creators"), but they're going to end up giving them 63% of their IaP revenue (90% of 70%) instead of 90%.
This is a business problem disguised as a justice issue.
> This is a business problem disguised as a justice issue.
And we're discussing it because the monopoly known as Apple is continuing to gaslight and extort our industry.
Apple cannot be the single point of entry into a device that is responsible for 50% of American computing-related commerce. That might have worked if Apple was a small device used by 5% of consumers, but let's be real. Apple is the face of modern computing.
What the question really should be is, "why should Apple get to enjoy all commerce and freedoms linked to computing?" Through marketing and developing a good product, they've brought themselves into a market leader position. The choice to lock down their device may have made sense at 5%, but now it suffocates our entire industry under their gargantuan weight.
Apple isn't a device maker anymore. They're the fabric of computing itself. They have all the customers, they control all the software, and they make all the choices. You don't get ingress without going through them. They've been transformed into an analog of a common carrier, and the law now needs to treat them as such.
The only path forward is to force Apple to allow web-based downloads of apps, no longer allow them to force Apple payment rails, and to enable non-Safari based browsers to be installed.
Simple fix that will restore balance and health to the industry.
After this change happens, Apple will remain a 2 Trillion dollar company. This has negligible impact on their revenue - all it does is force them to work harder and gives the rest of us much-needed breathing room.
(Nevermind the right to repair and compute arguments.)
Why does this rise to an issue of regulation for you? All these problems with the Apple ecosystem are optional: Android exists, and is a viable alternative with none of the mentioned downsides.
The fact that 50% of Americans freely choose to entrench themselves in an ecosystem with draconian rules and high fees does not imply that creating or operating such as system should be illegal. Apple would argue that the fees are necessary to fund creation of the system in the first place.
The only reasonable way to structure the payment is on the gross value. If Apple tried to define it on some net or retained value then Apple would be auditing the developers of 337030 paid apps each pulling their own shenanigans to hide their revenue.
I’m not sure the world wants or needs an App Store full of arbitrageurs. It wouldn’t be a very good experience for customers and it would lead even more questionable businesses to leverage it.
Apple gets 30% of what the end user pays. IaP has always worked this way. It's a high tax to be sure, but it's not like Apple gets half, or more than half.
If you can't run a self-sustaining business with the remaining 70%, then you have two choices at the moment: (1) find a new business to be in, or (2) do what similarly situated businesses do, and use a different mechanism for collecting revenue than IaP.
Saying "That's just how it is" is basically admitting admitting it's wrong but refusing to support fixing it.
I get where you're coming from. I think Fanhouse is a bad example case. I won't die on this hill. But if that's the best reason for something, we are admitting there is no good reason for it.
The thing is, we can argue ad infinitum as to what an acceptable commission should be. There’s no “correct” value. No matter what it is, someone will always complain that it’s too high. (Case in point: brick-and-mortar merchants who complain about 3-5% merchant fees for accepting credit cards.)
But the fact that it’s been this way for over 10 years and the app ecosystem has been very healthy is a pretty good existence proof that it’s not as big a deal as some vociferous people (who, in the end, usually just want more money for themselves) make it out to be.
Is the app ecosystem very healthy or could it be healthier? Why does the rate from 10 years ago make sense today?
In a free market, the rates would be set by market forces and we generally think those are right. But Apple set 30% and has never even reviewed it as far as we know.
I won't pretend there is a sure fire way of defining exactly the correct rate. There isn't. But that doesn't mean letting Apple set it is correct either. This is why we have utility boards: someone who isn't bias should set rates to make them fair and efficient and make sure the system is working as well as possible.
Your electricity price needs to be low enough you're not being fleeced, but high enough to allow investment in improved infrastructure. If you set the price it might be too low, if the local monopoly set the price it would be too high.
The app store is no different. Someone disinterested should be setting a price that maximises benefit for consumers.
That price might actually be higher? I don't know. I'm just saying that Apple shouldn't be permitted to set it alone and that "30%" was never carved I to stone by god as the right number. If anything, the fact it has stayed at 30% proves its wrong. What other price has remained exactly the same for over a decade?
Apple isn't alone is setting this price -- at the very least, Apple competes with Android for roughly half the smartphone market share. Making your app available in both ecosystems is not a requirement to run a successful business. As an example, consider the myriad apps that are available exclusively on iPhone, with no Android support.
The 30% in-app purchase tax can't be compared to a utility price because it isn't mandatory. As a business, if you don't want to pay it, you are free to target a different platform with a similar user base.
If high-quality apps stopped supporting iOS because of the high IaP fees, eventually Apple will be incentivized to reduce those fees. If apps elect to stay, the platform is clearly worth the cost.
The debate over whether app stores are a monopoly/oligopoly etc is pretty well gone over here isn't it? I won't waste your time repeating those points.
Interestingly, last time I checked 80% of iPhone users would not consider switching when surveyed (well done Apple).
I wonder if forcing an open market and even cross compatability would be a better semi-solution...
That certain people are angry about a situation such as this, despite the widespread evidence of customer satisfaction, speaks a lot about people’s priorities, I think.
Again, this is a deflection though isn't it? There will always be other issues in the world, so we should deal with everything else before we engage with apple?
And remember, users aren't the customers in this market, they're the product. The customer is the company being asked to fork over 30% just to access those users (who already paid for the phone and the data to connect it...).
Fanhouse can still pass IaP revenues onto their customers ("creators"), but they're going to end up giving them 63% of their IaP revenue (90% of 70%) instead of 90%.
This is a business problem disguised as a justice issue.