8 ms·

Well it's per install. And knowing apple, they might even count an update as an install. I suspect there's a DMA v2 coming, and it's going to be much much hard

Well it's per install. And knowing apple, they might even count an update as an install. I suspect there's a DMA v2 coming, and it's going to be much much harder on them with this behaviour. EDIT: https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/ https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-... 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue this seems obscene

soegaard 3y ago
"first annual install"
KerrickStaley 3y ago
It says "each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold" which I think means as long as you're updating your app at least once a year, you pay for each device your app is installed on (minus 1 million, which is a rounding error for the biggest apps).
- shagie 3y ago
  Not device - account. https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#distribution-eu https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#d... > First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge. Multiple devices with one account or new devices over the course of the 12 months are still a single install.
gumby 3y ago
They’ve been discussing the implementation with the EU for some time so it seems extremely likely this has all been OKed already.
jeffxtreme 3y ago
As an aside, look how clear and well-written this web page is. I'm always blown away by how well the whole Apple ecosystem (even the the developer documentation) is designed
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  I always (for the last ~10 years or so at least) found Apple documentation extremely poor overall.
_the_inflator 3y ago
Indeed. Clarification here in the calculator’s pop up: https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/ https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...
- radley 3y ago
  According to the calculator, a game that has 5M installs and earns $1M per year will have to pay Apple $2.37M per year. Worse, a game that has 5M installs and only earns $1 per year will still have to pay Apple $2.17M per year.
  - ABeeSea 3y ago
    Or they stay on the App Store and none of those fees apply.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - devrand 3y ago
      From the article: > iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold. So App Store or not, you need to pay the fee.
      - ABeeSea 3y ago
        >Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. Developers must adopt the new business terms for EU apps to use the new capabilities for alternative distribution or alternative payment processing. You don’t have to pay the fee if you stay on the existing business terms.
        Kon-Peki 3y ago
        If you are a new business starting after this goes into effect, are you presented with the choice of business terms?
arlcode 3y ago
The vast vast majority of apps doesn't But I agree, as expected, this will go to round two. Probably not even a new DMA just a court case about malicious compliance. The DMA was written expecting apples reaction Still that they will reduce the commission fee is quite important on its own. If this reduces the flood of free ad financed apps and moves the market to a more sustainable model I'm all for it (although I realise this stance is probably controversial)
- akie 3y ago
  > this will go to a round two And there is only one possible outcome: Apple will bend to the EU's will, because in the end the European market is too profitable to ignore.
  - arlcode 3y ago
    One interesting switch up could be the EU elections this year. Right, Far-right and EU-sceptic parties are predicted to become much stronger. So their stance might change on some topics
    - blibble 3y ago
      I wouldn't expect so The european far right are hardly fans of large American tech companies now, if they were domestic, that would be entirely different
    - tivert 3y ago
      > Right, Far-right and EU-sceptic parties are predicted to become much stronger. Do they have a much more favorable attitude towards American tech giants than whoever is in power now?
      - akie 3y ago
        If anything they’re in Putin’s pocket, not in Big Tech’s pocket.
dblitt 3y ago
$45k per month. Annually it's > $540,000 Also, updates do count. "A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app."
- 98codes 3y ago
  Reinstalls -- RIP these budgets come new iPhone release season
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - shagie 3y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#distribution-eu https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#d... > First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge. This is on a per account basis - not a per device basis. The install for a phone and iPad are the same install.
    - throwaway-blaze 3y ago
      Note there is zero way to audit this charge from apple. There's no way to identify an install on iOS anymore unless the user signs in/signs up for an account. There's also usually up to a 10% "breakage" between people who install from the App Store but never run your app.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        You don’t have to sign up for an account, an app can install some type of opaque object in iCloud that they can use to identify someone who uses their account. If I delete Overcast from my iPhone or install it on a brand new iPad, all of my data is kept in sync. That data is stored in a database where the user id is that opaque blob. Marco Arment (the author) does all he can to discourage users from storing a user name/password/email address as part of the login and only requires you to have one to associate your user to your account to access your podcasts on the web.
radley 3y ago
It looks like updates can count as a first annual install: A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app. However, there's extra mumbo jumbo about "it doesn't count for 12 months after a first install is counted. But the next one after starts a new first annual install." So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic.
- MerManMaid 3y ago
  >So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic. Are you referring to something specific here? Does Orange County have some stereotyped association with MLM schemes or something? (I'm genuinely asking as that would be hilarious and I'd love to learn more)
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Yes - bored housewives and money obsession.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Orange county is stereotypically a hotbed of MLM scams. Stay in a hotel there sometime and half the conference rooms will likely be booked by one or another.
    - MerManMaid 3y ago
      I've lived in the OC for the majority of my life and honestly just never thought about it. ^.^
  - todd3834 3y ago
    I’m from OC I didn’t know this was our stereotype but I’ve been pitched a bunch of MLM schemes when I was younger. I thought this was all over the place. However I haven’t been pitched anything since at least 10 years ago. Maybe I don’t look like I have a sphere of influence anymore lol
voisin 3y ago
If they publish through the App Store they pay nothing though (for a free app), so won’t this just mean free apps stick to the Apple App Store and apps over the break even price (€0.50/30% commission in the App Store) go to side loading?
- kivle 3y ago
  A big reason for alternative app stores is to allow apps that do not comply with app store rules though. Think emulators for instance. Or any other of the long list of arbitrary app store rules.
  - monetus 3y ago
    Apps that cap their userbase at 1 million, then fork themselves under a new name for the next million users? "Federation"
    - layer8 3y ago
      I wouldn’t be surprised if that violates the new business terms or the rules imposed in Apple’s app review process.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Yeah, I can only see this deal right now being beneficial if it's your only choice due to Apple simply not wanting to host your apps. So, 18+ apps, emulators, various apps banned from the app store over drama (Fortnite). It's also beneficial if you keep you 1. Keep your install base under 1M. So only if you're sure you have a niche app that you barely need to maintain. 2. If you somehow have a premium popular app. A $2 app would mean Apple is taking a 25% cut, a $5 app is taking 10%. Of course, since this is per device you will probably be hit by users who use multiple devices. Worse yet, apparently the install fee is "first install per year" and includes updates. So you will take a huge revenue dive if you want to maintain, de-incentivizing devs from supporting existing users 3. Manage your own alternative storefront. I feel this is where the deal may start to hit anti-trust issues depending on how the store takes these costs. Apple doesn't have to pay it's own store fee while a new store has to pay Apple for existing. Sounds like a way to suppress competition before it starts. I guess Epic v Apple part 2 will hit faster than expected. EDIT: oh, I don't know the logistics, but #4 can be ad supported apps. The most user hostile style of app but potentially one that can keep making it's $0.50 back year after year if they have an engaged user base. But since I know so little about adtech I am happy to be corrected on if this is sustainable
ben_w 3y ago
> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue > this seems obscene This is why I never cared about the 30% take: it was combining all the costs you'd have anyway into one simple number. People just acted like those things were all free just because Apple wasn't explicitly listing them. Could you optimise your expenses better by splitting them? Probably. And that may even be worth forcing the issue from a competitive PoV, because it means some customers will be effectively subsidising others: A weekly updated 2 gigabyte app that's free in the app store gets its bandwidth paid for in part by a 30 Mb app that charges a $10 monthly subscription and gets an update every 3 months. But even then, companies are expected to make profits. What's the level where it's fine for Apple to say "we want this much extra just for us"? For a lot of people the answer seems to be "zero!" — while this probably would not disincentivise Apple from making iOS given they also profit on the hardware, it would almost certainly disincentivise Google from bothering with any updates to Android.
- pcammeraat 3y ago
  And if your revenue is under the 1 million per year you can apply for only 15%. That is well worth it what you get back for it.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  Let's see where they find their 30% if browsers were required to provide (essentially) 100% features of native apps, and if they were required not to charge for them. Maybe iPhone costs would increase a few percent, probably not. This is just egregious rent seeking.
  - skydhash 3y ago
    That would just require browser devs to maintain a whole new OS. Native API are much more complicated than what is available on browsers
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      Fun fact: they already do. (Or at least Mozilla did, but given their massive engineering power it would be surprising if Google wasn't doing it as well). From what I heard at a Mozilla meetup a few years ago, the only thing that prevented Mozilla to ship the actual Firefox to iOS back then was Apple ToS banning apps with their own JIT compiler built-in.
stavros 3y ago
This is only for devices in the EU, there aren't 2B devices here.
- _cenw 3y ago
  You're off by about 3 zeros.
  - stavros 3y ago
    I meant to reply to the top-level comment about YouTube.
skywhopper 3y ago
"First install per year". So reinstalls after a year will be charged again. Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides. I'd rather see it broken out than baked into a 30% fee. Doing so would massively incentivize smaller binary sizes.
- ephemeral-life 3y ago
  > Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides The bandwidth that everyone is forced to use. The web has shown that decentralizing distribution is not only possible but works well. This is just another way for the worlds most profitable company to continue to rent seek.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- kmonsen 3y ago
  This applies for other app stores so is not related to Apple bandwidth.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    Exactly. People would conisder these alternative stores precisely so they don't have to rely on Apple's Bandwidth. But Apple apparently wants to get their money no matter how you host your app, and $100/seat/year is not enough money for them I suppose.
- _cenw 3y ago
  The technology fee is for notarizing (thanks, nobody asked for this), phoning home during installs and supposedly the existence of Xcode?
- megous 3y ago
  $500000 per 20TB*average number of updates per year. On a 20MiB app is a great deal, for sure, lol. You get the same bandwidth on a $20-40/month VM.
hnburnsy 3y ago
Is there VAT on that too?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Feels like Unity all over again. This time with a trillion dollar company instead of a billion dollar one.
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  And 10x higher fees (Unity is/was about 0.05 to 0.1, not even close to $0.5
- bickeringyokel 3y ago
  I suppose the difference being gamers seem to hate everything large game companies do, but tech community is pretty split down the middle on Apple being beyond reproach vs them being evil incarnate.
alexey-salmin 3y ago
[flagged]
da_chicken 3y ago
> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue > this seems obscene The web browser is right there. You don't have to have an app.
wbl 3y ago
So force the consumer to pay everything in a two sided market?
pcammeraat 3y ago
Yes also for updates or pushed via mdm. But only once per account. Doesn’t matter how many devices you have on that account. It counts as 1 install every year. Yes the fee is insane.

soegaard 3y ago

"first annual install"

KerrickStaley 3y ago

It says "each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold" which I think means as long as you're updating your app at least once a year, you pay for each device your app is installed on (minus 1 million, which is a rounding error for the biggest apps).

shagie 3y ago
Not device - account. https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#distribution-eu https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#d... > First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge. Multiple devices with one account or new devices over the course of the 12 months are still a single install.

gumby 3y ago

They’ve been discussing the implementation with the EU for some time so it seems extremely likely this has all been OKed already.

jeffxtreme 3y ago

As an aside, look how clear and well-written this web page is. I'm always blown away by how well the whole Apple ecosystem (even the the developer documentation) is designed

Wytwwww 3y ago
I always (for the last ~10 years or so at least) found Apple documentation extremely poor overall.

_the_inflator 3y ago

Indeed. Clarification here in the calculator’s pop up: https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-in-the-eu/ https://developer.apple.com/support/fee-calculator-for-apps-...

radley 3y ago
According to the calculator, a game that has 5M installs and earns $1M per year will have to pay Apple $2.37M per year. Worse, a game that has 5M installs and only earns $1 per year will still have to pay Apple $2.17M per year.
- ABeeSea 3y ago
  Or they stay on the App Store and none of those fees apply.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - devrand 3y ago
    From the article: > iOS apps distributed from the App Store and/or an alternative app marketplace will pay €0.50 for each first annual install per year over a 1 million threshold. So App Store or not, you need to pay the fee.
    - ABeeSea 3y ago
      >Developers can choose to adopt these new business terms, or stay on Apple’s existing terms. Developers must adopt the new business terms for EU apps to use the new capabilities for alternative distribution or alternative payment processing. You don’t have to pay the fee if you stay on the existing business terms.
      - Kon-Peki 3y ago
        If you are a new business starting after this goes into effect, are you presented with the choice of business terms?

arlcode 3y ago

The vast vast majority of apps doesn't But I agree, as expected, this will go to round two. Probably not even a new DMA just a court case about malicious compliance. The DMA was written expecting apples reaction Still that they will reduce the commission fee is quite important on its own. If this reduces the flood of free ad financed apps and moves the market to a more sustainable model I'm all for it (although I realise this stance is probably controversial)

akie 3y ago
> this will go to a round two And there is only one possible outcome: Apple will bend to the EU's will, because in the end the European market is too profitable to ignore.
- arlcode 3y ago
  One interesting switch up could be the EU elections this year. Right, Far-right and EU-sceptic parties are predicted to become much stronger. So their stance might change on some topics
  - blibble 3y ago
    I wouldn't expect so The european far right are hardly fans of large American tech companies now, if they were domestic, that would be entirely different
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Right, Far-right and EU-sceptic parties are predicted to become much stronger. Do they have a much more favorable attitude towards American tech giants than whoever is in power now?
    - akie 3y ago
      If anything they’re in Putin’s pocket, not in Big Tech’s pocket.

dblitt 3y ago

$45k per month. Annually it's > $540,000 Also, updates do count. "A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app."

98codes 3y ago
Reinstalls -- RIP these budgets come new iPhone release season
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- shagie 3y ago
  https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#distribution-eu https://developer.apple.com/support/dma-and-apps-in-the-eu#d... > First annual install. The first time an app is installed by an account in the EU in a 12-month period. After each first annual install, the app may be installed any number of times by the same account for the next 12 months with no additional charge. This is on a per account basis - not a per device basis. The install for a phone and iPad are the same install.
  - throwaway-blaze 3y ago
    Note there is zero way to audit this charge from apple. There's no way to identify an install on iOS anymore unless the user signs in/signs up for an account. There's also usually up to a 10% "breakage" between people who install from the App Store but never run your app.
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      You don’t have to sign up for an account, an app can install some type of opaque object in iCloud that they can use to identify someone who uses their account. If I delete Overcast from my iPhone or install it on a brand new iPad, all of my data is kept in sync. That data is stored in a database where the user id is that opaque blob. Marco Arment (the author) does all he can to discourage users from storing a user name/password/email address as part of the login and only requires you to have one to associate your user to your account to access your podcasts on the web.

radley 3y ago

It looks like updates can count as a first annual install: A first annual install may result from an app’s first-time install, a reinstall, or an update from any iOS app distribution option — including the App Store, an alternative app marketplace, TestFlight, an App Clip, volume purchases through Apple Business Manager and Apple School Manager, and/or a custom app. However, there's extra mumbo jumbo about "it doesn't count for 12 months after a first install is counted. But the next one after starts a new first annual install." So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic.

MerManMaid 3y ago
>So it's essentially some kind of twisted Orange County MLM logic. Are you referring to something specific here? Does Orange County have some stereotyped association with MLM schemes or something? (I'm genuinely asking as that would be hilarious and I'd love to learn more)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Yes - bored housewives and money obsession.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Orange county is stereotypically a hotbed of MLM scams. Stay in a hotel there sometime and half the conference rooms will likely be booked by one or another.
  - MerManMaid 3y ago
    I've lived in the OC for the majority of my life and honestly just never thought about it. ^.^
- todd3834 3y ago
  I’m from OC I didn’t know this was our stereotype but I’ve been pitched a bunch of MLM schemes when I was younger. I thought this was all over the place. However I haven’t been pitched anything since at least 10 years ago. Maybe I don’t look like I have a sphere of influence anymore lol

voisin 3y ago

If they publish through the App Store they pay nothing though (for a free app), so won’t this just mean free apps stick to the Apple App Store and apps over the break even price (€0.50/30% commission in the App Store) go to side loading?

kivle 3y ago
A big reason for alternative app stores is to allow apps that do not comply with app store rules though. Think emulators for instance. Or any other of the long list of arbitrary app store rules.
- monetus 3y ago
  Apps that cap their userbase at 1 million, then fork themselves under a new name for the next million users? "Federation"
  - layer8 3y ago
    I wouldn’t be surprised if that violates the new business terms or the rules imposed in Apple’s app review process.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Yeah, I can only see this deal right now being beneficial if it's your only choice due to Apple simply not wanting to host your apps. So, 18+ apps, emulators, various apps banned from the app store over drama (Fortnite). It's also beneficial if you keep you 1. Keep your install base under 1M. So only if you're sure you have a niche app that you barely need to maintain. 2. If you somehow have a premium popular app. A $2 app would mean Apple is taking a 25% cut, a $5 app is taking 10%. Of course, since this is per device you will probably be hit by users who use multiple devices. Worse yet, apparently the install fee is "first install per year" and includes updates. So you will take a huge revenue dive if you want to maintain, de-incentivizing devs from supporting existing users 3. Manage your own alternative storefront. I feel this is where the deal may start to hit anti-trust issues depending on how the store takes these costs. Apple doesn't have to pay it's own store fee while a new store has to pay Apple for existing. Sounds like a way to suppress competition before it starts. I guess Epic v Apple part 2 will hit faster than expected. EDIT: oh, I don't know the logistics, but #4 can be ad supported apps. The most user hostile style of app but potentially one that can keep making it's $0.50 back year after year if they have an engaged user base. But since I know so little about adtech I am happy to be corrected on if this is sustainable

ben_w 3y ago

> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue > this seems obscene This is why I never cared about the 30% take: it was combining all the costs you'd have anyway into one simple number. People just acted like those things were all free just because Apple wasn't explicitly listing them. Could you optimise your expenses better by splitting them? Probably. And that may even be worth forcing the issue from a competitive PoV, because it means some customers will be effectively subsidising others: A weekly updated 2 gigabyte app that's free in the app store gets its bandwidth paid for in part by a 30 Mb app that charges a $10 monthly subscription and gets an update every 3 months. But even then, companies are expected to make profits. What's the level where it's fine for Apple to say "we want this much extra just for us"? For a lot of people the answer seems to be "zero!" — while this probably would not disincentivise Apple from making iOS given they also profit on the hardware, it would almost certainly disincentivise Google from bothering with any updates to Android.

pcammeraat 3y ago
And if your revenue is under the 1 million per year you can apply for only 15%. That is well worth it what you get back for it.
mjburgess 3y ago
Let's see where they find their 30% if browsers were required to provide (essentially) 100% features of native apps, and if they were required not to charge for them. Maybe iPhone costs would increase a few percent, probably not. This is just egregious rent seeking.
- skydhash 3y ago
  That would just require browser devs to maintain a whole new OS. Native API are much more complicated than what is available on browsers
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    Fun fact: they already do. (Or at least Mozilla did, but given their massive engineering power it would be surprising if Google wasn't doing it as well). From what I heard at a Mozilla meetup a few years ago, the only thing that prevented Mozilla to ship the actual Firefox to iOS back then was Apple ToS banning apps with their own JIT compiler built-in.

stavros 3y ago

This is only for devices in the EU, there aren't 2B devices here.

_cenw 3y ago
You're off by about 3 zeros.
- stavros 3y ago
  I meant to reply to the top-level comment about YouTube.

skywhopper 3y ago

"First install per year". So reinstalls after a year will be charged again. Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides. I'd rather see it broken out than baked into a 30% fee. Doing so would massively incentivize smaller binary sizes.

ephemeral-life 3y ago
> Honestly, it makes sense to charge for the bandwidth Apple provides The bandwidth that everyone is forced to use. The web has shown that decentralizing distribution is not only possible but works well. This is just another way for the worlds most profitable company to continue to rent seek.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kmonsen 3y ago
This applies for other app stores so is not related to Apple bandwidth.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Exactly. People would conisder these alternative stores precisely so they don't have to rely on Apple's Bandwidth. But Apple apparently wants to get their money no matter how you host your app, and $100/seat/year is not enough money for them I suppose.
_cenw 3y ago
The technology fee is for notarizing (thanks, nobody asked for this), phoning home during installs and supposedly the existence of Xcode?
megous 3y ago
$500000 per 20TB*average number of updates per year. On a 20MiB app is a great deal, for sure, lol. You get the same bandwidth on a $20-40/month VM.

hnburnsy 3y ago

Is there VAT on that too?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

johnnyanmac 3y ago

Feels like Unity all over again. This time with a trillion dollar company instead of a billion dollar one.

Wytwwww 3y ago
And 10x higher fees (Unity is/was about 0.05 to 0.1, not even close to $0.5
bickeringyokel 3y ago
I suppose the difference being gamers seem to hate everything large game companies do, but tech community is pretty split down the middle on Apple being beyond reproach vs them being evil incarnate.

alexey-salmin 3y ago

[flagged]

da_chicken 3y ago

> 2,000,000 installs is a minimum of $45k in fees, even with $0 USD revenue > this seems obscene The web browser is right there. You don't have to have an app.

wbl 3y ago

So force the consumer to pay everything in a two sided market?

pcammeraat 3y ago

Yes also for updates or pushed via mdm. But only once per account. Doesn’t matter how many devices you have on that account. It counts as 1 install every year. Yes the fee is insane.