Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was dishonest, says judge

Re:Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was ... by Ancapistani on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @01:36PM (#24630664)

> I don't remember where I read this but someone mentioned that the judge asked Apple why they charge 30%, which I found to be a bit of a strange thing to ask (and probably a bit of a softball). Why not 30%? Why not 40%? Why do companies have margins that they set that the market will bear at all? Etc.

Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

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Re:Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was ... by jkaplowitz on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @05:56PM (#24633504)

> Presumably, if they’d said “because that’s what Google is/was charging”, it could be pursued as price fixing.

That's not price fixing if they make the decision to match Google on their own, rather than in concert with Google.

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Re:Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was ... by sjwright on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @06:14PM (#24633657)

If Apple chose to match the existing industry standard percentage but has not fixed any prices, is that price-fixing?

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Re:Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was ... by jkaplowitz on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @07:07PM (#24634110)

Not without coordination with other vendors, no.

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Re:Epic’s decision to bypass Apple’s App Store policies was ... by pneill on Tuesday September 29, 2020 @07:56PM (#24634450)

The number probably came from looking at what brick and mortar stores do. Typically stores "mark up" products by 40% from their distributors. And if you think about it, that's effectively what Apple does, but in this case, the distributor (aka app developer) has to "mark-up" the price to cover the cost incurred by selling in the app store. In general this practice is pretty common in retail.

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