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While we’re at it. I pay 30% cut of my app revenues to Apple. So for every sale i end up with 40% in pocket rest to Apple and government taxes. EU should look
by grezql 8y ago
While we’re at it.
I pay 30% cut of my app revenues to Apple.
So for every sale i end up with 40% in pocket rest to Apple and government taxes.
EU should look into their app fees
- r0fl 8y agoHow much would you rather pay to access 1,300,000,000 iOS users instead?
- grezql 8y agoRemember reason windows phone «died» was because they didnt have enough apps. Apps are value for iphone buyers. To answer yout question: 5-10%
- MichaelApproved 8y agoJust to put this in perspective, credit card fees are around 2.5%. So, you think Apple should collect 2.5-7.5%!(after covering CC fees) to confer the infrastructure required to run the app store (people, servers, office, etc)?
- frogeg 8y agoDo you really think "people, servers, office" cost that much?
- grezql 8y agoIm sure creditcard fees are lower for companies with billions of transactions like Apple. And yes i think my ballpark number is fair. This appstore market is a billion dollar industry. 10% of that is certainly more than enough to cover the expenses you mentioned. Believe me, if Apple had proper competition in smartphone market the fees would have been closer to my number. They are simply dodging taxes in Ireland, building t a trillion dollar fund, ripping of developers by abusing defacto monopoly, selling snake oil privacy first speeches while bending over for communist China. Fking sick and tired. I dont like regulations by gov, but with greedy no-longer innovating corporates we really need them
- ilikehurdles 8y agoDo credit card companies not have people, servers, and offices?
- TomMarius 8y agoHow often do you purchase an app? How often do you purchase everything else?
- bestnameever 8y agothey are offering more than just credit card processing.
- kjksf 8y agoIf Apple can't make a profit skimming 7.5% surcharge on billions of sales then they should get out of business of running an App Store and let someone else do it. In a free market situation someone will build a thriving business with such economics. Monopoly power over iOS users is the only reason Apple gets away with murder (i.e. skimming 30%).
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoSure. Not sure why you think that wouldn't cover their expenses and then some.
- michaelmrose 8y agoApple gets paid per unit of value that changes hands. What do you imagine their actual costs are for automatically vetting a 1 dollar game and transmitting it to a million users over one year. S3 storage / bandwidth prices according to google is $0.021 per GB per month for storage and $0.085 per GB of transfer so approx 3c for storage $8500 for transfer if we pretend that apple has to pay so much. In reality its probably much lower. They would earn 75000 by taking 7.5% so nearly 9x the cost of executing so one would imagine that could easily cover any overhead. In practice the revenue generated 26.5 billion for developers and 11.5 billion for apple in 2017. Even 2.5% would be almost a billion dollars 7.5% would be almost 3 billion dollars. I'm betting that apple can run an app store for 1-3 billion in a competitive market.
- zwily 8y agoLuckily for investors, Apple doesn’t charge on a cost-plus model.
- majewsky 8y agoExactly. Monopolies ought to be regulated to ensure a free market.
- millstone 8y agoThe smartphone market is quite competitive. Apple is far from a monopoly.
- foobarbazetc 8y ago5-10%. What’s “access”? Apple aren’t featuring your app unless you know someone. Otherwise they’re providing payment processing (<2% at Apple scale) and binary hosting.
- sjwright 8y agoThey're providing an extensive toolchain, extremely well documented APIs, a solid development environment, code signing, app reviews etc. They're also providing a mechanism for automated updates. They're also providing a degree of trust around the sale process, including the developer's identity and an additional layer of guarantees of suitability and merchantability. They're also providing to the end user a level of confidence—whether real or perceived—about the products being sold and their ability to mislead, abuse or damage the device. They're maintaining the ecosystem that allows the App to be sold in the first place. And they're providing all of the above for free to developers who want to give away their apps. I'm not saying the sum total is worth 30% of gross sales—or even half that—but it's not simply credit card processing and binary hosting.
- jasonlotito 8y agoAs a customer who purchased the iPhone, I paid for the iPhone already. The first two points benefit Apple and me, not just App developers. I've already paid for that, because that's part of what Apple sells when it sells an iPhone: access to apps. As for the degree of trust around the sales process, that's not true. I get that with my credit cards already. Apple doesn't instill any additional confidence when it comes to the sales process. Quite the opposite in fact. I mean, if I want a refund for valid reasons, and Apple won't give it to me, and I call up my credit card company and they issue a charge back, will Apple do something negative to my account (such as block other purchases I made?) > They're also providing to the end user a level of confidence Yeah, and I paid for that already. > They're maintaining the ecosystem that allows the App to be sold in the first place. That benefits them, because without it, I wouldn't buy an iPhone. > And they're providing all of the above for free to developers who want to give away their apps. No, they aren't providing it for free. I'm paying for it, the iPhone/iPod owner. They are literally using these things you mention in their marketing of the iPhone. Take away apps, and see how well the iPhone does. Apple takes 30% because they can. I'd much rather see the producer of the App get my money, but Apple makes this difficult to do easily for customers. If Apple really had my best interest in mind, they'd charge a modest fee for the app store and processing, or allow companies to use 3rd party processors.
- 43920 8y agoThe problem here is that you have to pay the fee, even if you think it isn't reasonable. I have no idea if 30% is a reasonable fee to charge or not, and because no one is allowed to compete with Apple, there's no way to find out. If you were allowed to install apps from alternate sources, app developers could offer discounts if you pay them directly or install the app from another store, and Apple would have to adjust its fees to match what the services it offers are actually worth.
- pmorici 8y agoThere are really two questions. One is what is a reasonable profit margin for a software distributor. Before there was a app store there was boxed software in brick and mortar stores so there is a reference there. The other issue is that Apple imposes a monopoly on software distribution in their devices. Because of the monopoly no one can really be sure what a fair cut is in the app age because there is no competition.
- 1123581321 8y agoOne problem with that is that Apple’s restrictions allow them to eliminate piracy, and perform an approval process that keeps high the perception of iOS app quality. These two things make the iOS app market much more attractive to developers. Allowing Android-style competition would lower the value. It might be that it lowers it by less than the difference between 30% and a “fair” cut, but it’s hard to tell and users and developers wouldn’t be well-served by performing an uncontrolled experiment to test the theory.
- millstone 8y agoIt also gives Apple a big lever to ensure the platform stays agile. For example, Apple was able to make 64 bit happen first because they knew what software could be installed (so they knew what the compatibility risk was), and because they controlled distribution. If there were another major app store with significant market share, Apple would find it more difficult to evolve the platform.
- taormina 8y ago
- stale2002 8y agoI would rather that those users, who own their own devices, are able to do whatever the hell that they want with their own property. Apple does not rent you a device. They sell them. Once they sell them, they should be yours. That's how property works. If a refrigerator company put in special protections that made it difficult to put food in your refrigerator, without paying a 30% tax, would you accept that? I wouldn't.
- nomel 8y agoThis must be a bad analogy since consumers do widely accept it. Nobody I know cares about where profits go when they buy an app, they just want nice apps that work well for cheap.
- stale2002 8y agoUsers "accept" it because it is literally illegal to create an alternative. If I am a factory, I can't build iPhones and sell them to people. Even if I was previously a factory that Apple contracted to make iPhones previously, and therefore they are exactly the same. On the other hand, the same arguement does not apply to refrigerators. Most refrigerators are basically the same. It is easy to provide alternatives that are almost the same. This is not the case for smartphones. Smart phones are a strongly differentiated good, and another company can't just make an iPhone that's exactly the same as Apple's iPhones, as that's illegal. Therefore apple can do whatever they want with their iPhone, and nobody can really make the decision to buy an iPhone that doesn't have these restrictions. Indeed, when people tried to remove these restrictions, Apple tried to sue people who jail broke their phones. That's not ok. It is horrible of them to have done that.
- millstone 8y agoI don't understand what principle you are endorsing. Are you saying it should be illegal to make hardware devices unless you allow others to duplicate it exactly? Nobody can make the decision to buy a Chromecast or an Echo or a Nest or a Tesla without restrictions inherent to those devices. In what way is Apple special here?
- ransom1538 8y agoApple controls how icons are laid out in their store - you don’t have 1.3 billion people looking at your app. If you did have 1.3 billion app icon impressions you will be removed from the store.
- michaelmrose 8y agoPutting up a wholly artificial barrier to entry and then charging a toll doesn't read as providing value to me. Linux repos provide an obvious model for multiple sources of packages accessed through the same interface.
- Mononokay 8y agoConsider making apps for something else; shockingly alternative mobile platforms exist. You aren't entitled to put things on their App Store, you know.
- grezql 8y agoThere are just 2 OSes in the mobile market. One is a cesspool, so that leaves me with AppStore
- MichaelApproved 8y agoHow do you think they keep it from being a cesspool? You think it might have to do with the people they hire to manage it? People they pay with the fees they collect? It also shows that not being a cesspool isn't necessarily ready. They deserve to be compensated for that effort.
- grezql 8y agoAppstore had 12 billion USD revenue. So around 3.6 billion to hire app reviewers, server, office etc? Right...
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoYou forgot shareholder value.
- guntars 8y agoThen that’s what you’re paying for.
- philjohn 8y agoSo it sounds like, from a dispassionate "it's just business" viewpoint, they've priced it perfectly.
- sincerely 8y ago
- kyrra 8y agoThere is a US lawsuit about this right now that had already been accepted by the Supreme Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Pepper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._v._Pepper
- grezql 8y agoThank you. Im setting up a signature campaign website
- zaroth 8y agoIf you want to use Apple SDK and APIs to develop your software and use Apple Infrastructure, and Services to deploy your software, push notifications, upgrades, manage billing, etc. then they want 30%. Or you can use none of those services and program against the Web API and pay them 0%. It seems like a fair choice.
- liquidise 8y agoIs this the case for native iOS? I would love to forego the Apple toolchain and release obstacles and use stripe apis. But to suggest that a web solution is on par with a native app isn’t really a sound argument
- zaroth 8y agoIt’s not on par in the slightest! Because Apple has spent (billions?) making their Native SDK, and it shows. But they do charge 30% for the privilege of using it to make commercial software.
- wvenable 8y agoYeah no. Commercial SDKs and toolchains existed before iOS; heck the OS itself is just a fork of Mac OS. There is no financial reason, other than massive profits, to charge 30% on every transaction.
- 8y ago
- Brahma111 8y agoIs going PWA an option? 99% of the apps can just be that; A PWA. Unfortunately most consider having an app on the store is a mandatory thing for branding. I hope PWA does the same to Apple what the web did to Microsoft; in a good way, remove lock-ins
- ethagknight 8y agoIs it ok for the government to take 30% but not Apple? Or are you saying the EU should look into EU’s app fees as well? Apple at least provides some value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem.
- ardy42 8y ago> Is it ok for the government to take 30% but not Apple? Or are you saying the EU should look into EU’s app fees as well? Apple at least provides some value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem. I'm pretty sure the EU provides a lot of "value add directly to the transaction and ecosystem." They certainly provide more of that than Apple. Good, comprehensive laws and regulations that are consistently enforced are a lot more important to sustaining modern society than producing a smartphone with a mildly curated app store.
- ethagknight 8y agoHa, not arguing EU doesn’t provide value, but specific to the transaction? Not much there: the Apple App Store transaction takes place around the world without the EU’s input. The value you are describing is very much on a different level to purchasing an app electronically. I just thought it was interesting that apple’s cut is viewed as unethical and illegal when the government takes the same. If 30% is the cost of providing a stable, safe marketplace, and EU and Apple are both creating marketplaces, then I don’t see the foul, except that those are pricey marketplaces