4 ms·

I think devices, OSes, apps and services are all retail products. The extent to which Apple sells a locked down device is the the extent to which it's trying to

by ece 5y ago

I think devices, OSes, apps and services are all retail products. The extent to which Apple sells a locked down device is the the extent to which it's trying to unfairly control multiple secondary markets. It's irrelevant how easy or hard developers have it, the consumer can pick if they want to pay once or have a subscription for the feature set they want in apps.

dylan604 5y ago
>The extent to which Apple sells a locked down device The closed nature is the only argument that carries water with me as far as being anti-competitive. Every business has to pay to have their product distributed, and the 30% just never sounded unfair to me.
- mthoms 5y ago
  What would be the percentage where you think it starts becoming “unfair”? And how did you arrive at that figure? Honest question.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    I have to deal with physical retail products where you have a wholesale price hopefully at least doubling your cost for the product. The MSRP is ususally double the wholesale. So if you sell the product directly, you get to earn the reatil rate directly. If you offer your product directly to a retailer, you only get to make the wholesale value for that sale. If you get to a size where you are selling to a big box store, they will negotiate further into your wholesale rate on the lure of larger volume of sales. So, all of that to say I'm used to getting 50% of the retail price by selling to wholesellers, so being able to have a 70/30 split being offered by Apple would be 20% increase in my earnings.
    - ece 5y ago
      Ebay and Amazon take ~10%, you can also sell on your own website through advertising. No options exist for mobile app devs other than the two app stores on two platforms, except for Samsung and Amazon device owners which offer their own stores, and possibly F-Droid.
    - mthoms 5y ago
      Yeah, I owned a retail store (in the same area code as you coincidentally). Even though we marked everything up 80-100% our profit margin after expenses would be 2-3%. This is typical. If your retailers are doing >10% profit margin then they are extremely lucky. Apple is making upwards of 90% profit margin on the App store. With zero inventory risk and no competition. In the real world, those kind of margins would attract immense competition... which would bring those margins way down. Anyways, for reasons that I'm sure you're well aware the App Store vs. brick and mortar retail comparison is pretty useless. I wish people would stop using it (though in this case I appreciate that you provided context for your response). The question remains though - at what % would Apple's take start becoming unfair and how did you arrive at that number?
- ece 5y ago
  30% isn't unfair if you provide enough services, it's the lack of competition stemming from iOS being closed that's the problem. Google _had_ to do what Apple did with 15% for small developers. Google didn't do it on their own, they had no reason to because Apple wouldn't change until it saw regulatory and legal pressure. Is that a normally functioning market? Allow alternate app stores, and you'll likely see as much competition on mobile as there is when comparing Itch vs. Steam.

by ece 5y ago

dylan604 5y ago

>The extent to which Apple sells a locked down device The closed nature is the only argument that carries water with me as far as being anti-competitive. Every business has to pay to have their product distributed, and the 30% just never sounded unfair to me.

mthoms 5y ago
What would be the percentage where you think it starts becoming “unfair”? And how did you arrive at that figure? Honest question.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I have to deal with physical retail products where you have a wholesale price hopefully at least doubling your cost for the product. The MSRP is ususally double the wholesale. So if you sell the product directly, you get to earn the reatil rate directly. If you offer your product directly to a retailer, you only get to make the wholesale value for that sale. If you get to a size where you are selling to a big box store, they will negotiate further into your wholesale rate on the lure of larger volume of sales. So, all of that to say I'm used to getting 50% of the retail price by selling to wholesellers, so being able to have a 70/30 split being offered by Apple would be 20% increase in my earnings.
  - ece 5y ago
    Ebay and Amazon take ~10%, you can also sell on your own website through advertising. No options exist for mobile app devs other than the two app stores on two platforms, except for Samsung and Amazon device owners which offer their own stores, and possibly F-Droid.
  - mthoms 5y ago
    Yeah, I owned a retail store (in the same area code as you coincidentally). Even though we marked everything up 80-100% our profit margin after expenses would be 2-3%. This is typical. If your retailers are doing >10% profit margin then they are extremely lucky. Apple is making upwards of 90% profit margin on the App store. With zero inventory risk and no competition. In the real world, those kind of margins would attract immense competition... which would bring those margins way down. Anyways, for reasons that I'm sure you're well aware the App Store vs. brick and mortar retail comparison is pretty useless. I wish people would stop using it (though in this case I appreciate that you provided context for your response). The question remains though - at what % would Apple's take start becoming unfair and how did you arrive at that number?
ece 5y ago
30% isn't unfair if you provide enough services, it's the lack of competition stemming from iOS being closed that's the problem. Google _had_ to do what Apple did with 15% for small developers. Google didn't do it on their own, they had no reason to because Apple wouldn't change until it saw regulatory and legal pressure. Is that a normally functioning market? Allow alternate app stores, and you'll likely see as much competition on mobile as there is when comparing Itch vs. Steam.