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Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple inte

Analogous != same. It means its very similar factually. The law does not require that Google and Apple run their online stores the same way, or that Apple interact with Google's store the same way they choose to run their own store. That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). Apple cannot then do the same thing it prohibits in its own app store in the Google Play Store, which has similar rules, because both of these actions have the effect of taking legal positions. In fact it's arguable that a free marketplace encourages and depends on different companies taking different approaches to meet customer demands. Which Apple does not permit. It's literally Apple's way, plus a 30% cut for doing nothing, or you're not even allowed to play. And that's exactly what antitrust laws were intended to prevent.

Despegar 6y ago
>That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). The reason why everyone has to narrowly define the market to "Apple has monopoly power in the iOS market" is because they don't actually have monopoly power in smartphones and are mad about that fact. Defining markets are a major part of antitrust cases and just because a prosecutor or regulator is willing to do it doesn't mean it will actually work in court.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Apple does not have a monopoly in the smartphone market, but it does have a dominant position there and a monopoly in the tablet segment where it does the same thing.
  - Despegar 6y ago
    "Monopoly power" and "dominance" mean the same thing. One is used in the US, the other in the EU. You're going to have a tough time getting a court to agree that Apple is dominant in smartphones in the EU.
    - Mindwipe 6y ago
      > You're going to have a tough time getting a court to agree that Apple is dominant in smartphones in the EU. No you're not. The definition of dominance in the EU is primarily that you're in a position to materially affect market pricing, which I think is actually pretty easy to demonstrate in Apple's case. Overwhelming market share isn't required, and there are several cases that have found companies to be "dominant" where they had less than 50% market share in the EU. (As a good demonstration of this Google's own competition law settlement on Android apps pre-installation in the EU. Google do not approach anything like having a monopoly market share in the EU either, but they still settled because they were going to lose.)
      - JimDabell 6y ago
        > The definition of dominance in the EU is primarily that you're in a position to materially affect market pricing, which I think is actually pretty easy to demonstrate in Apple's case. Is it? App Store prices have been a race to the bottom for years, yet it's clearly in Apple’s interests to keep the prices high, both to keep their revenue from the service as high as possible and to stimulate the app economy. If they had control over the market pricing, why did the race to the bottom happen and why haven't Apple stopped it? If the argument is that they don't care about the revenue and they actually prefer the prices as low as possible to add value to their hardware devices, then why are Apple charging 30% and not 0%?
        Mindwipe 6y ago
        I don't really agree that's relevant to be honest. The affect on pricing can be quite wide. For example, the EU will not have an issue finding developers who will say they priced their product 30% higher on all platforms than they otherwise might have because they knew the had to pay the Apple surcharge and Apple do not permit you to charge extra to cover their cut (except then they sometimes arbitrarily do! But that's not what the terms say).
- iav 6y ago
  Defining Apple as a monopolist on iOS is like calling Ford a monopolist in selling radios in Ford vehicles. No one thinks it’s a violation for Ford to include their own radio (built by a 3rd party like Bose - same as an app) in a Ford truck, and offer you an expensive upgrade to that radio (say also by Olufsen - also like a better App) if you want it. No one demands that Ford allow a different vendor to sell you a compatible radio through a Ford dealer and for Ford to not take a cut of the purchase price. And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. This analogy is at the core of Apple’s defense and it was brought up in previous anti trust cases like AA v. Sabre.
  - Denvercoder9 6y ago
    > And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. No, not really. In the EU for example, a unauthorized change to one part can legally never void the warranty to an unrelated part.
  - mikestew 6y ago
    And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. Don't know where you live, but that is not true in the U. S. "It is generally accepted as" against Federal law.
    - Someone 6y ago
      Technically, I think it, unfortunately, is true that companies can say that in the USA and many other countries. Companies can say things they know aren’t true, misleading customers. They even often can make it hard for customers who know their rights to exercise those rights. I think it would be an improvement if such actions were punished harsher and more often.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    > if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK This has been generally illegal in the US since 1975: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2302 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2302 (section c)
- oillio 6y ago
  Apple has control of the iOS App market. It is a pretty large barrier for a customer need to switch platforms to get an app that Apple has denied access. I am not a lawyer, but that sure smells like the potential for monopolistic control.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    This is like saying 7-11 has a monopoly on what is sold in 7-11 stores. If I want a copy of the King James Bible and 7-11 chooses not to sell that, I have to leave 7-11 and go find another store that does. Yes, that's a barrier I have to go through to get my Bible. Should the government make it 7-11's responsibility to solve that for me?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - munk-a 6y ago
      I'm not certain how this is considered to be analogous - is the assumption that other retailers would need to forward customers to 7/11 when 7/11 carries a good a client is interested in? As a possibly better analogy... Let's say I run a Flea market and also direct sell some items to customers. I charge independent retailers a fee for setting up a booth in my market space and don't excise that same fee from my own booths. Then I go to open a booth in a local mall to help sell some of my directly vendored items and raise an exception all the way to city hall that the mall attempting to charge me for running a booth in their property is impeding the free flow of commerce and hurting the local economy - while I continue to charge booths in my market space for operating.
      - tanjtanjtanj 6y ago
        > and raise an exception all the way to city hall that the mall attempting to charge me for running a booth in their property is impeding the free flow of commerce and hurting the local economy Except Apple has never made that argument to anyone. They simply added a way to pay for their subscription directly in their app rather than in the Play Store; Something Google allows.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I too feel a little weird about "iOS app ecosystem" as the definition of a market that matters for anti-trust regulation, but at the same time consider that smartphones are not fungible goods. People generally choose iPhone vs. Android for particular reasons, and then often stay on those platforms because of features that aren't available on the competing platform, or just because they've succumbed to ecosystem lock-in. Switching to the other platform isn't just a matter of swapping out a piece of hardware: it involves installing or finding workalike applications, often manually re-entering data, and sometimes losing access to DRMed purchases. Given that, "iOS App Store" does start feeling like a market that should be regulated as its own entity.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Name one popular app that is not cross platform? How many apps have people paid for on iOS that are not subscription based and work on both platforms? Most money from apps Ecome from in app purchases from whales of pay to win games or subscriptions. How much data would really need to be “manually re-entered”?
    - kelnos 6y ago
      That's fair, but doesn't invalidate all the other reasons why switching from iOS to Android is prohibitively difficult. It's laughable to suggest there's no lock-in at all. And some people just like iOS itself.
- heisenbit 6y ago
  To what extent is this about Apple and not also about Google who is the other party of the deal? In that case the market is unquestionably the whole smartphone market.
snowwrestler 6y ago
If Apple is violating antitrust laws with their own store, it doesn't matter whether their use of the Google store is consistent with their own behavior. And if they're not violating antitrust law, that inconsistency also does not matter. I think you're mixing up legal concepts that are not dependent on one another.
gmanley 6y ago
> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). Can you point me to the specific law they are violating? From my understanding antitrust laws really aren't that clear and it depends on the situation and their control of a market. For example, you need to prove that they have a monopoly that hurts consumers. They may have a monopoly on iPhones but not mobile phones in general. My point is you are saying they have specifically broken the law, but I think that has yet to proven and is certainly not cut and dry until it's in court.
- stale2002 6y ago
  ".e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market" This is a very common thing that is brought up in anti-trust law cases. That is what he is referring. It is regarding anti-trust law.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  Certainly in the EU you are not required to demonstrate a monopoly.
fredfjohnsen 6y ago
Every Apple ID requires a form of payment associated unless you specifically set it up without one. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034 An Apple ID has nothing to do with Apple Pay. Apple Pay is a separate service you can turn on if you want to, or, not. The crazy ideas people have about Apple & anti-trust mostly have to do with pretty much everyone not really understanding Apple service offerings.
dustinmoris 6y ago
That’s absurd. If I run a shop and I require an ID check at the entrance then it doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to shop myself in stores which don’t require ID checks.
- deong 6y ago
  That's not the right analogy. It means you're not allowed to sue someone else for requiring an ID check in order to let you shop there. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if this defense was particularly robust anyway. It seems you'd just have to argue that there's some slight difference in the situations and that's why I'm doing something that guy shouldn't do. But either way, you're not taking away the correct message from his example.
pccole 6y ago
Which Apple does not permit. It's literally Apple's way, plus a 30% cut for doing nothing, or you're not even allowed to play. And that's exactly what antitrust laws were intended to prevent. I wouldn't say Apple or Google do nothing. Their Argument is we provide the infrastructure and developer tools so we're going to take a slice off all your sells to keep this stuff up and running. Even the Amazon App Store takes a 30% cut.
- thebean11 6y ago
  If you aren't using their payment systems you aren't using that specific infrastructure or dev tools though. This isn't about someone wanting Apple's (super nice) payment system for free, it's about Apple forcing them to use it instead of their own solution.
- Despegar 6y ago
  If the antitrust laws were designed to prevent that (they weren't) then there's been a massive failure in enforcement because nothing has changed since Apple launched the App Store in 2008. In reality laws don't require platforms to be "open" or "closed" or dictate how you're supposed to make money. And that kind of regulation would be bad for dynamic markets and competition.
  - yyyk 6y ago
    If you look at Spotify's allegations[0], than things did change in 2015 when Apple launched Apple Music, creating a conflict of interest for Apple. Anyhow, anti-trust moves slow. The trust cases against IBM took more than a decade, and the case against Microsoft also took a few years. [0] https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
    - Despegar 6y ago
      "Conflict of interest" isn't illegal. Apple has been competing with app developers on their platform from the first days of the App Store. If Spotify is somehow trying to suggest that Apple should be barred from doing so, that's not going to be possible under antitrust laws.
JimDabell 6y ago
> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store I think you're mixing up Apple Pay with in-app purchases. Apple Pay is for real-world purchases. In-app purchases are for digital goods or services. If we're talking about music streaming, we're talking about in-app purchases, not Apple Pay. Apple don't force you to use Apple Pay for anything, in fact they won't let you use Apple Pay in this situation.
oillio 6y ago
> plus a 30% cut for doing nothing It's not nothing. Maybe not worth 30% but it is worth something. They run the store, buy the servers and pay for the bandwidth. Pay the engineers to develop and manage the infrastructure. Run the app certification process. Maintain the security of the platform. etc. If they can't charge their 30% cut, they will need a different business plan. Possibly charging app developers directly for access to the app store. They are not going to just give up their 30% and do nothing.
- mackey 6y ago
  They already charge developers to access the App Store. And I think any iOS/Mac developer will tell you that the cut they are taking is not being re-invested into making the developer or the App Store experience better for developers or users.
- markstos 6y ago
  Apple would not need a different business plan. Apple currently has $192.8 billion cash on hand. If Apple took a smaller cut, they would simply have a few less billion dollars in the bank. Many, many individual developers and small business would have a little more money in their bank accounts. The small businesses are more likely to be actively put this money back into the economy then the idle billions in Apple's bank accounts.
- basch 6y ago
  There should be a difference between a 30% cut of an app (of which apple can say their toolkits and os development are part of the product offering) and a 30% cut of a subscription, especially a multiplatform subscription. if you could buy netflix with applepay, but then 90% of your netflix usage is not on apple devices, apple collects on that entire subscription. Subscriptions should be priced more like a credit card transaction fee. They could have marginal brackets that increase slightly at scales, to account for bigger apps possibly causing more backed development work.
  - jimkleiber 6y ago
    I appreciate this comment, especially the end, because what I have sorely missed in most of the discussion on here and on Twitter are suggestions on what to do instead. If Apple is using monopoly power to bully iOS developers, what should Apple do? Charge subscriptions at 0%? Flat fee? Is 15% good? If they use Netflix on non-Apple hardware, should it be a revenue share? I'm not saying Apple isn't breaking the law, I just really wish there were more suggestions on solutions on what they should do instead. So for that, I appreciate you helping me to see it in a more nuanced way.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
madeofpalk 6y ago
> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay Just to be clear, afaik there has not been a ruling so far that asserts this, so all you can say is that in your opinion they are in breach of anti trust, but they have not actually been found to be guilty of that yet.
dpkonofa 6y ago
>Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store No, it's not. They do not require the use of Apple Pay. It's baked into the infrastructure of the product. No one is forced to use it.
tekknik 6y ago
Apple Pay does not take a 30% cut. And this entire out of context screenshot is misleading. If you want to say they’re doing it to avoid Googles 30% cut then you’re free to your opinion but what’s really happening here is you’re adding a payment method to your apple account. It’s the same as google allowing me to modify my payment methods on their services using an iphone app.
scarface74 6y ago
if Apple was in fact “violating anti-trust laws”, don’t you think that would have been a problem for 12 years? Random HN users can’t declare that anti trust laws are being violated and make it a fact. If Apple is violating the law, so is every console maker.

Despegar 6y ago

>That's correct. But the law does require them to run the stores in a way that does not violate antitrust laws. Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). The reason why everyone has to narrowly define the market to "Apple has monopoly power in the iOS market" is because they don't actually have monopoly power in smartphones and are mad about that fact. Defining markets are a major part of antitrust cases and just because a prosecutor or regulator is willing to do it doesn't mean it will actually work in court.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
Apple does not have a monopoly in the smartphone market, but it does have a dominant position there and a monopoly in the tablet segment where it does the same thing.
- Despegar 6y ago
  "Monopoly power" and "dominance" mean the same thing. One is used in the US, the other in the EU. You're going to have a tough time getting a court to agree that Apple is dominant in smartphones in the EU.
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    > You're going to have a tough time getting a court to agree that Apple is dominant in smartphones in the EU. No you're not. The definition of dominance in the EU is primarily that you're in a position to materially affect market pricing, which I think is actually pretty easy to demonstrate in Apple's case. Overwhelming market share isn't required, and there are several cases that have found companies to be "dominant" where they had less than 50% market share in the EU. (As a good demonstration of this Google's own competition law settlement on Android apps pre-installation in the EU. Google do not approach anything like having a monopoly market share in the EU either, but they still settled because they were going to lose.)
    - JimDabell 6y ago
      > The definition of dominance in the EU is primarily that you're in a position to materially affect market pricing, which I think is actually pretty easy to demonstrate in Apple's case. Is it? App Store prices have been a race to the bottom for years, yet it's clearly in Apple’s interests to keep the prices high, both to keep their revenue from the service as high as possible and to stimulate the app economy. If they had control over the market pricing, why did the race to the bottom happen and why haven't Apple stopped it? If the argument is that they don't care about the revenue and they actually prefer the prices as low as possible to add value to their hardware devices, then why are Apple charging 30% and not 0%?
      - Mindwipe 6y ago
        I don't really agree that's relevant to be honest. The affect on pricing can be quite wide. For example, the EU will not have an issue finding developers who will say they priced their product 30% higher on all platforms than they otherwise might have because they knew the had to pay the Apple surcharge and Apple do not permit you to charge extra to cover their cut (except then they sometimes arbitrarily do! But that's not what the terms say).
iav 6y ago
Defining Apple as a monopolist on iOS is like calling Ford a monopolist in selling radios in Ford vehicles. No one thinks it’s a violation for Ford to include their own radio (built by a 3rd party like Bose - same as an app) in a Ford truck, and offer you an expensive upgrade to that radio (say also by Olufsen - also like a better App) if you want it. No one demands that Ford allow a different vendor to sell you a compatible radio through a Ford dealer and for Ford to not take a cut of the purchase price. And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. This analogy is at the core of Apple’s defense and it was brought up in previous anti trust cases like AA v. Sabre.
- Denvercoder9 6y ago
  > And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. No, not really. In the EU for example, a unauthorized change to one part can legally never void the warranty to an unrelated part.
- mikestew 6y ago
  And if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK. Don't know where you live, but that is not true in the U. S. "It is generally accepted as" against Federal law.
  - Someone 6y ago
    Technically, I think it, unfortunately, is true that companies can say that in the USA and many other countries. Companies can say things they know aren’t true, misleading customers. They even often can make it hard for customers who know their rights to exercise those rights. I think it would be an improvement if such actions were punished harsher and more often.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  > if Ford says that installing a third party radio without their authorization voids your warranty or otherwise makes it impossible to do so, it’s generally accepted to be OK This has been generally illegal in the US since 1975: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2302 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/2302 (section c)
oillio 6y ago
Apple has control of the iOS App market. It is a pretty large barrier for a customer need to switch platforms to get an app that Apple has denied access. I am not a lawyer, but that sure smells like the potential for monopolistic control.
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  This is like saying 7-11 has a monopoly on what is sold in 7-11 stores. If I want a copy of the King James Bible and 7-11 chooses not to sell that, I have to leave 7-11 and go find another store that does. Yes, that's a barrier I have to go through to get my Bible. Should the government make it 7-11's responsibility to solve that for me?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I'm not certain how this is considered to be analogous - is the assumption that other retailers would need to forward customers to 7/11 when 7/11 carries a good a client is interested in? As a possibly better analogy... Let's say I run a Flea market and also direct sell some items to customers. I charge independent retailers a fee for setting up a booth in my market space and don't excise that same fee from my own booths. Then I go to open a booth in a local mall to help sell some of my directly vendored items and raise an exception all the way to city hall that the mall attempting to charge me for running a booth in their property is impeding the free flow of commerce and hurting the local economy - while I continue to charge booths in my market space for operating.
    - tanjtanjtanj 6y ago
      > and raise an exception all the way to city hall that the mall attempting to charge me for running a booth in their property is impeding the free flow of commerce and hurting the local economy Except Apple has never made that argument to anyone. They simply added a way to pay for their subscription directly in their app rather than in the Play Store; Something Google allows.
kelnos 6y ago
I too feel a little weird about "iOS app ecosystem" as the definition of a market that matters for anti-trust regulation, but at the same time consider that smartphones are not fungible goods. People generally choose iPhone vs. Android for particular reasons, and then often stay on those platforms because of features that aren't available on the competing platform, or just because they've succumbed to ecosystem lock-in. Switching to the other platform isn't just a matter of swapping out a piece of hardware: it involves installing or finding workalike applications, often manually re-entering data, and sometimes losing access to DRMed purchases. Given that, "iOS App Store" does start feeling like a market that should be regulated as its own entity.
- scarface74 6y ago
  Name one popular app that is not cross platform? How many apps have people paid for on iOS that are not subscription based and work on both platforms? Most money from apps Ecome from in app purchases from whales of pay to win games or subscriptions. How much data would really need to be “manually re-entered”?
  - kelnos 6y ago
    That's fair, but doesn't invalidate all the other reasons why switching from iOS to Android is prohibitively difficult. It's laughable to suggest there's no lock-in at all. And some people just like iOS itself.
heisenbit 6y ago
To what extent is this about Apple and not also about Google who is the other party of the deal? In that case the market is unquestionably the whole smartphone market.

snowwrestler 6y ago

If Apple is violating antitrust laws with their own store, it doesn't matter whether their use of the Google store is consistent with their own behavior. And if they're not violating antitrust law, that inconsistency also does not matter. I think you're mixing up legal concepts that are not dependent on one another.

gmanley 6y ago

> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store (i.e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market). Can you point me to the specific law they are violating? From my understanding antitrust laws really aren't that clear and it depends on the situation and their control of a market. For example, you need to prove that they have a monopoly that hurts consumers. They may have a monopoly on iPhones but not mobile phones in general. My point is you are saying they have specifically broken the law, but I think that has yet to proven and is certainly not cut and dry until it's in court.

stale2002 6y ago
".e., leveraging dominant/monopolistic market position in one market in a non-competitive manner over another market" This is a very common thing that is brought up in anti-trust law cases. That is what he is referring. It is regarding anti-trust law.
Mindwipe 6y ago
Certainly in the EU you are not required to demonstrate a monopoly.

fredfjohnsen 6y ago

Every Apple ID requires a form of payment associated unless you specifically set it up without one. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034 An Apple ID has nothing to do with Apple Pay. Apple Pay is a separate service you can turn on if you want to, or, not. The crazy ideas people have about Apple & anti-trust mostly have to do with pretty much everyone not really understanding Apple service offerings.

dustinmoris 6y ago

That’s absurd. If I run a shop and I require an ID check at the entrance then it doesn’t mean that I am not allowed to shop myself in stores which don’t require ID checks.

deong 6y ago
That's not the right analogy. It means you're not allowed to sue someone else for requiring an ID check in order to let you shop there. I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be surprised if this defense was particularly robust anyway. It seems you'd just have to argue that there's some slight difference in the situations and that's why I'm doing something that guy shouldn't do. But either way, you're not taking away the correct message from his example.

pccole 6y ago

Which Apple does not permit. It's literally Apple's way, plus a 30% cut for doing nothing, or you're not even allowed to play. And that's exactly what antitrust laws were intended to prevent. I wouldn't say Apple or Google do nothing. Their Argument is we provide the infrastructure and developer tools so we're going to take a slice off all your sells to keep this stuff up and running. Even the Amazon App Store takes a 30% cut.

thebean11 6y ago
If you aren't using their payment systems you aren't using that specific infrastructure or dev tools though. This isn't about someone wanting Apple's (super nice) payment system for free, it's about Apple forcing them to use it instead of their own solution.
Despegar 6y ago
If the antitrust laws were designed to prevent that (they weren't) then there's been a massive failure in enforcement because nothing has changed since Apple launched the App Store in 2008. In reality laws don't require platforms to be "open" or "closed" or dictate how you're supposed to make money. And that kind of regulation would be bad for dynamic markets and competition.
- yyyk 6y ago
  If you look at Spotify's allegations[0], than things did change in 2015 when Apple launched Apple Music, creating a conflict of interest for Apple. Anyhow, anti-trust moves slow. The trust cases against IBM took more than a decade, and the case against Microsoft also took a few years. [0] https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/ https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/
  - Despegar 6y ago
    "Conflict of interest" isn't illegal. Apple has been competing with app developers on their platform from the first days of the App Store. If Spotify is somehow trying to suggest that Apple should be barred from doing so, that's not going to be possible under antitrust laws.

JimDabell 6y ago

> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store I think you're mixing up Apple Pay with in-app purchases. Apple Pay is for real-world purchases. In-app purchases are for digital goods or services. If we're talking about music streaming, we're talking about in-app purchases, not Apple Pay. Apple don't force you to use Apple Pay for anything, in fact they won't let you use Apple Pay in this situation.

oillio 6y ago

> plus a 30% cut for doing nothing It's not nothing. Maybe not worth 30% but it is worth something. They run the store, buy the servers and pay for the bandwidth. Pay the engineers to develop and manage the infrastructure. Run the app certification process. Maintain the security of the platform. etc. If they can't charge their 30% cut, they will need a different business plan. Possibly charging app developers directly for access to the app store. They are not going to just give up their 30% and do nothing.

mackey 6y ago
They already charge developers to access the App Store. And I think any iOS/Mac developer will tell you that the cut they are taking is not being re-invested into making the developer or the App Store experience better for developers or users.
markstos 6y ago
Apple would not need a different business plan. Apple currently has $192.8 billion cash on hand. If Apple took a smaller cut, they would simply have a few less billion dollars in the bank. Many, many individual developers and small business would have a little more money in their bank accounts. The small businesses are more likely to be actively put this money back into the economy then the idle billions in Apple's bank accounts.
basch 6y ago
There should be a difference between a 30% cut of an app (of which apple can say their toolkits and os development are part of the product offering) and a 30% cut of a subscription, especially a multiplatform subscription. if you could buy netflix with applepay, but then 90% of your netflix usage is not on apple devices, apple collects on that entire subscription. Subscriptions should be priced more like a credit card transaction fee. They could have marginal brackets that increase slightly at scales, to account for bigger apps possibly causing more backed development work.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  I appreciate this comment, especially the end, because what I have sorely missed in most of the discussion on here and on Twitter are suggestions on what to do instead. If Apple is using monopoly power to bully iOS developers, what should Apple do? Charge subscriptions at 0%? Flat fee? Is 15% good? If they use Netflix on non-Apple hardware, should it be a revenue share? I'm not saying Apple isn't breaking the law, I just really wish there were more suggestions on solutions on what they should do instead. So for that, I appreciate you helping me to see it in a more nuanced way.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

madeofpalk 6y ago

> Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay Just to be clear, afaik there has not been a ruling so far that asserts this, so all you can say is that in your opinion they are in breach of anti trust, but they have not actually been found to be guilty of that yet.

dpkonofa 6y ago

>Apple is violating antitrust laws by forcing companies to use Apple Pay as a condition of using the App Store No, it's not. They do not require the use of Apple Pay. It's baked into the infrastructure of the product. No one is forced to use it.

tekknik 6y ago

Apple Pay does not take a 30% cut. And this entire out of context screenshot is misleading. If you want to say they’re doing it to avoid Googles 30% cut then you’re free to your opinion but what’s really happening here is you’re adding a payment method to your apple account. It’s the same as google allowing me to modify my payment methods on their services using an iphone app.

scarface74 6y ago

if Apple was in fact “violating anti-trust laws”, don’t you think that would have been a problem for 12 years? Random HN users can’t declare that anti trust laws are being violated and make it a fact. If Apple is violating the law, so is every console maker.