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Meta would owe Apple 70M per year just for having Facebook on iOS
- kj99 3y agoSeems pretty reasonable since they have paid nothing for a giant distribution mechanism for almost 15 years. One of the chief complaints about the 15/30% fee has been that people like Meta pay nothing and are subsidized by everyone else.
- mirsadm 3y agoHow's that reasonable? If it were possible they could have hosted the app on their own web site for next to nothing.
- kj99 3y agoIf you think that Apple's platform brings no value then sure.
- 8organicbits 3y agoI'm seeing a 300 MB app (iOS) and 3B monthly active users. Perhaps 900,000,000 GB of data transfer per year between fresh installs and updates? Using dumb file hosting on Backblaze this would cost somewhere near $9M (public pricing). A full app store would have additional costs but $70M still seems high.
- nightski 3y agoThis seems like such an odd argument to me. The distribution mechanism is what sells luxury devices at a huge profit margin for Apple. It's a value add for Apple to have a walled garden store.
- liotier 3y agoIt is a two-sided market and Apple naturally wants a bite on both ends.
- Panini_Jones 3y agoYou're right, it's a value add for Apple. If there were no non-Apple apps, I would not buy an iPhone.
- votepaunchy 3y agoApple could individually negotiate with the top 1000+ apps. The question is of having a wide open marketplace with standardized rules. How many users need the long tail?
- kj99 3y agoThat's the opposite of a value add. What you are describing is an unavoidable cost of doing business which Apple is entitled to charge developers for.
- kj99 3y agoThe iPhone sold at a huge profit margin before there even was a store so this is obviously false.
- leereeves 3y agoOnly a few million iPhones were sold before the App Store (which was introduced in July 2008), as this chart shows: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-3rd-quarter-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-ipho...
- kj99 3y agoSo what?
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- the_gipsy 3y agoThey already have a giant distribution mechanism, the web. It's just that apple cripples the web experience in favor of their appstore, where they have control and get their cut.
- dchftcs 3y ago0.5 per user per year by installs is significant for many apps, apart from apps from large companies, only subscription-based apps have the economics to justify this cost.
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- Erratic6576 3y agoSo you can either pay the Gatekeeper money or you can pay the Gatekeeper money
- xtracto 3y agoOr just dont use Apple. People make it a huge deal , but they can just vote with their wallet. Apple will continue their anticompetitive a d abusive tactics als long as the market tells them that its OK (with their spending).
- Erratic6576 3y agoThe alternative isn’t amazing either
- TrianguloY 3y agoAs a merchant, you either pay to enter the walled garden, or you pay for user's bathroom passes so they can go to your shop outside.
- willsmith72 3y agoI want to be convinced why, 10 years down the line, we won't just be using PWAs or an equivalent web-on-home-screen tech.
- jauntywundrkind 3y agoSure feels like Apple is doing their damnest to make that happen. Oh a secure well established capable platform? That's what users want & the mighty service you provide? Yeah, well, uh, the rest of the world has a standardized one of those, it kind of rocks.
- consumer451 3y agoIs this one of the intentional roadblocks to prevent that? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64448312/use-the-web-share-target-api-on-pwas-in-ios https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64448312/use-the-web-sha...
- willsmith72 3y agoOne among many, they pushed back for years even allowing installs on iphones
- curt15 3y agoThen we'll finally realize Steve Job's original vision for third party applications on iPhones.
- jc_dc 3y agoAgree 100% Last two products we have built were PWA’s and platform risk is the biggest reason for that.
- curt15 3y agoI'd love to see how Apple justifies the 0.50 euro per person tax for third party app stores in the name of "security" or "protecting users" or if they abandon that pretense.
- liotier 3y agoThat trust in a distribution channel commands a price is fine. What is not is that no other distribution channel with equal access can exist on Apple devices.
- qeternity 3y agoThis sentiment is obviously driving quite a lot of current regulatory action, but I'm not sure I really understand it. Apple is large yes, but not remotely close to a monopoly. They have 25% smartphone marketshare, and there are numerous other major smartphone manufacturers. If Apple abuses its power, there are plenty of alternatives that customers can switch to. They should otherwise be free to do with their products as they see fit no? I presume you disagree with my last question, so I ask then where do we draw the line? Should Nike be forced to carry Adidas clothes? Should AWS be forced to allow customers to co-locate their own hardware? Should Tesla be forced to produce cars that can also be converted to internal combustion engines? If I want the product to be different from the one being offered from vendor A, I simply go buy one from vendor B.
- ephemeral-life 3y ago> If Apple abuses its power, there are plenty of alternatives that customers can switch to This is just not how the 3 party markets work. For there to be mobility, both the users and developers have to move. Good luck convincing users to move of their $1000+ purchase. Maybe developers should start a union and boycott the app stores
- qeternity 3y agoI don't follow: if third party developers only build for iOS, that is Apple's fault? If Walmart doesn't carry Target products, I either buy a substitute or I shop at both stores.
- ephemeral-life 3y agoTo apple, there are 2 customers. Device owners and developers. If device owners choose to buy ios, developers are forced to build for ios. There is no "just don't buy from apple" from the developers pov. A quick google says there are about 1.4 billion iphones. It is unrealistic to expect developers to just "not choose apple" on such a large market. Thus the digital markets act. Walmart doesn't own the distribution channel of a platform with a double digit percentage of the world population on it.
- dmitrygr 3y agoI legitimately do not understand this line of questioning. Do people really think that developing an OS and all those fancy APIs is free? Part of the R&D costs have always been recouped by hardware sales, and part have always been recouped by fees from the store. Did people really expect Apple to start working for free? And no, I don’t think the usual “they make enough from hardware” is a valid counter argument. Anyone who makes anything is free to decide what to charge for it.
- tictacttoe 3y agoThe problem is that there are really only a few large platforms: windows, Android, macOS and iOS. These are also owned by three mega corps. The issue here is that free market mechanisms break down in the small competitor count limit.
- dmitrygr 3y agoSo your suggestion is to make it uneconomical to be a competitor in this market? sure, that'll help
- jc_dc 3y agoSo you think Apple will go broke if they have to compete with sideloaded apps? Keep in mind, we already pay them for dev tools each year, just like how we pay Microsof for visual studio.
- dmitrygr 3y agoWhat makes you competent to decide what someone else charges for their work? Unless it is your work, you get no say in how much it costs.
- jc_dc 3y agoUmmm…might want to tell that to Apple. Check the guidelines. If us devs were smart, we’d organize and have our apps go on a maintenance break until Apple and Google remember what a computing and platform is without 3rd party devs. You’re already seeing that with car and headset though.
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- rahkiin 3y agoNote (missing from sensational title): only if Meta moves to the agreement that allows their own marketplace on iOS. They can stay in the current agreement with no changes to them or what they pay
- loeg 3y agoAnd also Meta has zero motivation to move to an alternative marketplace. They don't sell the app or use micropayments.
- walteweiss 3y agoWhat a shitty clickbate title.
- karaterobot 3y agoWith the caveats that I: * Don't use Facebook or any other social networking apps * Don't really use very many apps, period * Have the deepest disdain for every company involved in this Apple's pricing plan doesn't strike me as crazy. Given the value that being on the App Store brings to Facebook, even if they choose not to monetize through it. If you asked them: would you rather pay $70MM or not have your app listed on the App Store, it feels like they would rush to pay the money, knowing that if they disappeared from the App Store it would be catastrophic. My naive understanding of pricing makes this seem like a fair trade. Those for whom I have more sympathy are small app developers who would be punished by success under this model, especially the vanishingly few who release free (unmonetized) apps and could become so successful they went bankrupt under Apple's model. That failure makes me dislike the proposal. At that point, you'd be insane to release a good and free app, and that's not the world I want to encourage.
- theshrike79 3y agoOh no, how will Meta ever survive. Their revenue last year was way over 100 BILLION. Paying 70M a year is a rounding error.