Apple tries to counter that the problem is Spotify. It's Spotify that is money-hungry, Apple claims:
Underneath the rhetoric, Spotify’s aim is to make more money off others’ work.
The only problem with this argument is that Spotify is just one example. App publishers of all sizes have expressed grave dissatisfaction over this issue. Ultimately, this has led to a poorer experience for Apple's own customers in the form of higher fees for in-app purchases or weird, convoluted checkout flow that requires you to goto your browser to finish a transaction.
Apple owns a mall (iOS). In that mall, Apple owns a book store (iTunes). Amazon also has a book store in the mall (Kindle).
Apple does not want to sell Amazon's books (Kindle format ebooks) in it's store (iTunes). Ok.
Apple decrees that no store in the mall shall sell any books but iTunes books, which only they may sell. Not Ok.
In the brick-and-mortar world, malls are fungible, and stores that sell the same goods are fungible. The iPhone is not fungible.
Anyone that wants to constrain themselves to a single market, needs to accept the rules of focusing on a single market.
So not sure what you mean.
It’s the same (technically easier as I don’t need to convert ePub to mobi)
As far as I know you can't do that on iOS. There's also nothing stopping the devs from selling IAP themselves on their own website. So no, Steam is much much more open than Apple's App store. Not to mention the fact that Steam is completely optional and the App store is not.
Not at scale, no, but you can generate promo codes (up to a limit - maybe 100?) to distribute your paid app for free.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#in-...
If the App Store could be circumvented as easily, Spotify probably wouldn't be raising this issue to begin with.
You can upgrade to Spotify Premium through a website which they advertise during their free tier ads.
Apple doesn't allow that apparently.
epic is not the saviour here, they're dumping cash to bring shitty console practices to the pc ecosystem, namely storefront exclusives
Steam Link faces a similar issue. Apple, apparently, considers buying desktop games through an app that can remotely play them on your phone to be the same situation, and demand that payments go through them.
There's also no law against having a monopoly, only for abusing your monopoly in one market to gain an unfair advantage in a different one.
Yes there is. It's called anti-trust law and a large part is about pure market share.
It's also illegal to use your monopoly in a market to get advantages in that market. Most notably, you can't use your monopoly to keep your monopoly. (I.e. intel making a deal with dell where dell cannot use AMD processors)
It's legal to have a monopoly and get advantages in the market.
It's illegal to have a monopoly and then try and extinguish your competition in the current or any adjacent markets.
My given example of dell and Intel actually happened and was prosecuted. How does that fit your claims?
Monopolies and oligopolies are inefficient. Whether legal or not they result in in detrimental outcomes.
That's not a law against having one, only abusing one.
No, it's still not illegal to have a Monopoly. The FTC can block mergers that can create them if they believe it will harm consumers, e.g. through higher prices caused by less competition, but they typically won't block them if they think consumers will benefit through operational efficiencies gained by consolidation.
I mean that’s basically them abusing their monopoly on Walmart stores right?
Let’s get things straight. Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphones. Apple does not have a monopoly on smartphone app stores.
Walmart tells a manufacturer they have to pay a special Walmart surcharge every time a sale is made, and that they can't raise their prices only at Walmart (or give discounts at other stores) to make up for the difference.
And, in addition, after the sale is made, if the product allows the customer to buy add-ons after they bring the product home, the customer is required to go back to Walmart to purchase that add-on, and another Walmart surcharge is assessed; the manufacturer isn't allowed to sell add-ons directly to the customer without Walmart acting as middleman.
Similarly, it wouldn’t surprise me if music festivals or cinemas charge suppliers selling on their grounds more than 30% of revenues.
I know app stores feel different, but as far as I know, that legally still is a reasonably apt comparison. That may eventually change, but if so, someone will have to specify what exactly the difference is. I’m not sure that is as simple as “physical vs digital”.
McDonalds is not a market, McDonalds is a vendor in a Market.
Apples has a created a market on is the platform by virtue of the App Store, a case can be made for Anti-Trust due to to this, but it would be a hard one.
Defining what is and is not a market is always one of the largest challenges for Anti-Trust, take for example the Merger of Sirus and XM, there was a debate over if Sat Radio was a market separate and independent of Traditional Radio, in the end Sirus / XM won and was able to establish that Sat Radio was not an independent market because consumer could easily switch between Sat Radio and Traditional Radio
Given the Lockin, and increasing Costs associated with Changing Mobile Platforms it becomes more of a question on if iOS and Andriod should be separate markets or be considered a single market. I can see cases for both
In this case apple has a marketplace AppStore.
This is the strange bit, since Apple does this very rarely. Or at least, they used to…
You could say that Apple has a monopoly over developers building apps and providing their services to people using iPhones. But is that the scope that is under regulation, or what constitutes the "marketplace"?
Someone else looking at it could say that Spotify has a multitude of ways to provide its content to customers -- web, it's own Windows + Mac desktop apps, Android, etc. Would you claim that that is lacking competition?
Which way is a regulator supposed to look at it?
Like Walmart has a monopoly on shelf space at walmart.
Apple does not have a monopoly on neither Phones nor on application markets for phones. They have a very attractive market, which they control, but not a monopoly.
I think the most likely scenario is that Apple will capitulate and remove any restrictions from apps soliciting payments in a web browser from within the app (are there any restrictions on this?).
If you want to put your product into the distribution channel that Apple spent shitloads of money to create and operate, then you have to pay their fees and that means you can’t engage in a practice like linking to an outside signup page that is solely for the purpose of circumventing the fees you rightly owe for use of the distribution channel.
Nobody has to distribute your app for free. You don’t like the prices Apple charges for it? Go to Android, or make your own distribution channel, whatever.
Spotify is free to not participate if they don’t like the pricing.
Spotify already has their own distribution channel (sign up on their website), and Apple is prohibiting them from mentioning it on iPhones and instead forces them to use Apple's distribution channel, which comes with a hefty price tag.
So if they want to distribute their free app on the iPhone, they are welcome to do so, as long as they don't mention that people have to go to their website to sign up for the premium service.
We can still argue about whether Apple is allowed to behave this way, but at least we'll be arguing about the right thing.
If Spotify deems 30%/15% split is too much to be able to sell their services on iOS, they don't need to participate in that market, they can continue selling their online streaming services on the Web and Android and and spend the money they would've paid Apple in distribution costs in more advertising/marketing to acquire new Customers.
If the App Store revenue share is so lucrative they can also consider that as an opportunity and are free to build and sell on their own platform, invest their resources in building hardware + mobile devices, OS, Apps + software, dev tools, distribution channels, retail stores, marketing/advertising to entice everyone to use it and enjoy the 30%/15% revenue share from everyone else choosing to participate and thrive on it. Or maybe it will end up being cheaper for them and they'll get more revenue because of iOS's larger and quality user base to just pay the App Store fees for being able to offer their commercial services to the iOS ecosystem created with Apple's investments.
> “Spotify already has their own distribution channel (sign up on their website)”
Yes, and if they don’t like the prices for oveying the rules of Apple’s distribution channel, they are free to remove the app from Apple’s app store, and notify customers that they cannot use the service on iOS devices.
The problem is that you can't laugh Apple out of the market for payments on iOS devices, because they don't allow other entrants into that market.
Is it because they provide a service in exchange for that 30%, a service that many people are willing to pay 30% for?
Best case scenario is
1) Apple switches their platform monetization to a more direct model where you pay to advertise your app in the App store. This will get tricky because their "Top apps" list still serve as advertising but you can't just remove an app from there because it refuses to pay.
2) Apple removes the restrictions against advertising alternative payment/subscription methods
I definitely take issue with it's avoidance of the core issues though: That the services they provide aren't optional on the iPhone. They make it sound like connecting Spotify to users, and allowing them to use their in-app purchase mechanism is a service they offer that they should be paid for. But the reality is, that Spotify has no choice but to use that service, which is the definition of a monopoly.
In that, I feel they didn't meaningful counter Spotify's primary anticompetition claim, and I look forward to seeing what the EU makes of it.