WordPressiOS Locked by App Store

Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by gsich on Friday August 21, 2020 @10:04PM (#24240951)

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines

3.1.3b

>your general communications about other purchasing methods must not discourage use of in-app purchase

It's vague (probably intentionally) but having a higher price in the app is certainly discouraging compared to the "normal" way.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by DaiPlusPlus on Friday August 21, 2020 @11:52PM (#24241392)

I wonder if Apple did start requiring the IAP price to be the same as the price everyone else pays - would that definitely be illegal?

I have a B2B app in the app-store which only has a login-screen on the app - so hopefully that won't attract Apple's attention, but if they do I was thinking about making our service-fee an Apple Pay ("real-life") purchase with lower fees where we'd mail the customer a brick with an activation code printed on... tempting...

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by LeonB on Saturday August 22, 2020 @12:43AM (#24241605)

A normal business would not get away with that as it is an unreasonable request. If apple were to do that then it would only be because of their market power. Hence they’d be (further and more clearly) demonstrating that they are in breach of anti trust laws. So yes, my guess is it would be clearly illegal.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by londons_explore on Saturday August 22, 2020 @02:43AM (#24242212)

Airbnb and booking.com get away with requirements not to list the same property elsewhere for less money.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by DaiPlusPlus on Saturday August 22, 2020 @05:57AM (#24243034)

Do you have a citation for that? Because that definitely seems unreasonable if AirBnb are taking a cut of that.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by vinay_ys on Saturday August 22, 2020 @06:47AM (#24243226)

Cost of doing business and price you would want to charge and what customers are willing to pay - all these would be different for different sales channels, different geographies, different feature bundles etc. And it is perfectly logical and reasonable to charge different rates on that basis. It would be very surprising and most likely run afoul of anti-competitive laws in most countries if any particular channel/marketplace operator demanded its participants to keep price parity with all other channels in general. They could do that or even demand exclusivity for a limited period in exchange for other special considerations (like special promotions etc). But in general, quite unlikely.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by chrismorgan on Saturday August 22, 2020 @05:32AM (#24242931)

I think it would be illegal in Australia.

Credit card networks have charges, and they used to tell businesses “you’re not allowed to pass this fee on to your customers”. I don’t know if they try to maintain this rule elsewhere, but this was confirmed to be illegal at some point in Australia (I dunno, maybe 10–15 years ago? I can’t immediately find a reference to the decision), so some businesses will say things like “1.5% surcharge for using Visa/Mastercard” (per https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/prices-surcharges-receipts..., the surcharge isn’t supposed to exceed the merchant’s actual costs; in practice I suspect it regularly does on small businesses, so that they can state a simple percentage rather than calculate more precise figures that vary by payment type).

If Apple tried to tell an Australian business “you may not pass the 30% fee on to your users”, I expect that business could appeal to… I don’t actually know who it would be, maybe the ACCC?

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by donatzsky on Saturday August 22, 2020 @04:27AM (#24242659)

I'm pretty sure they used to require uniform pricing. I remember Spotify getting in trouble for having different prices in the app. But that was several years ago.

B2B apps are exempt from the the IAP requirements.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by DaiPlusPlus on Saturday August 22, 2020 @05:59AM (#24243037)

How does Apple define "B2B" though?

It's an important question to SaaS products that want to pivot to B2C or launch a B2C view of a B2B product.

Take Office 365 for example, originally it was B2B for the first few years then Microsoft made it available to everyone. Similarly, would you consider Adobe Creative Cloud a B2B service or B2C?

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by scarface74 on Saturday August 22, 2020 @08:32AM (#24243686)

Spotify didn’t get “into trouble” for doing this. They did that for years.

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by LeonB on Monday August 24, 2020 @11:58PM (#24268032)

They took Apple to court. There’s a huge battle over it. It’s been quite troublesome!

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Re:WordPressiOS Locked by App Store by scarface74 on Saturday August 22, 2020 @08:31AM (#24243681)

There is a difference between you can’t advertise a higher price than you can’t have a higher price. There are plenty of existence proofs that companies have been having different prices for years.

I’m sure Best Buy wouldn’t want you to advertise in Best Buy that you can find the product cheaper on Amazon.

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