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A comment on App Store to Be 'Split in Two' Ahead of EU iPhone Sideloading Deadline. Parent comment

Re:App Store to Be 'Split in Two' Ahead of EU iPhone Sideloa... by gruez on Monday January 15, 2024 @02:38PM (#39005125)
>The regulators and DMA just need to consider that it qualifies as e.g. gatekeeping, which is centrally referenced. Even if it can't be defined as a required action of gatekeeping today the DMA allows for the commission to quickly update that to qualify and require action by Apple. If, by some miracle, the regulators truly made a law which doesn't allow them to regulate the anti-competitiveness they intended too and they are truly beat by some gotcha this time then Apple has only bought a delay not an exception.

Is charging a royalty for using the iOS SDK "gatekeeping"? I don't see why that's the case. Is Epic Games "gatekeeping" Unreal Engine by demanding 5% royalty to use their engine? Why should it be any different for Apple to demand royalty for using their SDK?

Even if EU magically made a law that explicitly banned royalties for operating system SDKs, that won't be the end of the story. Such measures could be construed as anti-free trade (given how it disproportionately affects US companies compared to EU companies), and will probably lead to a trade war and/or WTO arbitration between the EU and the US.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:App Store to Be 'Split in Two' Ahead of EU iPhone Sideloa... by zamadatix on Monday January 15, 2024 @05:04PM (#39006668)
If they kept it to something like 5% and don't try to stop alternatives when used with other stores then it's probably not something that'd cause problems. The same is true for any sane pricing of external API integrations regardless of source as charging for push notifications or similar is fine by itself too.

Where they'd get into trouble is by trying to turn these things into ways to move the 30% revenue cut. Just moving the 30% revenue from "rights to be on the one and only store" to "rights to write apps against the device with the one and only SDK" is quite clearly a different motive and forced cost model than having a 5% SDK fee where the developer is free to choose a different SDK.

I.e. "but others charge for an SDK" doesn't allow you to then change your SDK cost model to exactly match what was deemed illegally anticompetitive forced market pricing. It just allows you to charge for your SDK in a competitive way, nothing more.

[ Parent | on HN ]