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> I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (
by Ancapistani 6y ago
> I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (and probably a bit of a softball). Why not 30%? Why not 40%? Why do companies have margins that they set that the market will bear at all? Etc.
Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago> Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing. That's not price fixing if they make the decision to match Google on their own, rather than in concert with Google.
- sjwright 6y agoIf Apple chose to match the existing industry standard percentage but has not fixed any prices, is that price-fixing?
- jkaplowitz 6y agoNot without coordination with other vendors, no.
- pneill 6y agoThe number probably came from looking at what brick and mortar stores do. Typically stores "mark up" products by 40% from their distributors. And if you think about it, that's effectively what Apple does, but in this case, the distributor (aka app developer) has to "mark-up" the price to cover the cost incurred by selling in the app store. In general this practice is pretty common in retail.