Suggesting that what Apple does is equivalent to a payment processor is ridiculous. I suggest looking at Epic v Apple and how that argument went down in court. It was embarrassing to witness.
Yes, agreed they are more like a mob running amok in a neighborhood but for the moment I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and looking at it purely as a transaction processor.
I wonder how all of those defending Apple in this thread would respond if they jacked up the prices to say 75%. And why stop there?
How do you pay your taxes in UK, Turkey, Poland, USA, Japan, China, Australia and the rest of the 175 countries? How do you handle the regulatory requirements in each country and how do you navigate through the trade agreements?
I'm asking you to enlighten me. Currently I don't have to deal with any of these, Apple handles all that for me, I like that and that's why I'm active in this thread. I'm defending a service that I see value in but maybe you can shine a light and demonstrate that all these can be handled for cheaper and easier than using Apple's service that charges %15 to %30.
I'm asking legitimate question, I'm puzzled by your dismissive tone. How do you sell software and services in 175 countries for less work and commission than Apple's service?
Good for you that you are running international business for a couple a decade know, would you share some of that knowledge?
That it works for you is fine. You obviously have no incentive to look further than what works for you and you are fine with paying 30% for a service that is not competitive but that is convenient.
If you were a bit larger that equation would change. Your first step would then be to use a commercial payment services provider such as Stripe, Adyen or any of the others to process the transactions for you (rates: 1 to 5%), possibly falling back to Apple in case their coverage doesn't perfectly overlap. Then at an even higher level of transactions you could choose to do the payment processing yourself.
It's pretty simple, really. And as for taxes: that too is something that you can arrange in different ways, depending on where your main place of business is registered.
My dismissive tone is because it appears that you want me to do a bunch of homework for you while at the same time arguing that there is nothing to be concerned about in 10's of comments in this thread. You have already made up your mind and seem to use questions as a way to argue rather than that you are really interested in the answers. I predict that as a result of this response you are going to come up with another set of questions for me to answer or a new set of arguments that move the goalposts away from your previous claims.
But the essence of my response is: anti-competitive behavior can not be argued for by utility to some subset of the customers. The phone company provides a lot of value. But if they behave in an anti-competive way, for instance by price gouging customers on something that costs them peanuts such as roaming then they deserve to be smacked down, even if some people will argue that you could of course buy a different phone for every country as an alternative, and so those roaming charges are acceptable because they are cheaper. That misses the point entirely.
> If you were a bit larger that equation would change
Right.
Can you please stop saving smaller developers from Apple? Thanks!
PS: You maybe need some homework too. Essentially, Stripe etc. doesn't handle anything else that processing your payments(Maybe that changed or will change in the future). They have list of countries that they support and links to the governing bodies, you are on your own to figure out how to sell in these countries. There are some companies that handle stuff like that but you don't simply pay 99$/year and start using them, there are also publishers that will do it for you but they are much much more predatory and restrictive that Apple. So please, if you have something that you know say it, instead of passive aggressively attacking my character. If you are business genius you say you are, it would be much nicer of you to share some of that with those who know less instead of throwing generalised assumption and saying things like "go do your homework".
Nobody said that you can't do business with Apple in any way that you want.
Your arguments in this thread are based on some kind of extrapolation that is not warranted.
As for what Stripe and other PSPs do: I'm intimately familiar with that stuff. You are free to do your own marketing/sales/payment processing/whatever but you should not be forced to deal with any particular party, including Apple at some price that they set.
Note that if Apple would charge regular PSP fees we probably would not be having this discussion and you would be making more money.
I'm glad that you are intimately knowledgable but your original claim was that %30 is a bad deal and large corporations are in a mission to help small developers agains Apple.
Then when I press you to show some calculation, you admit that you actually need to be "a bit bigger than a small". Essentially, what you say that all you need is a dream and a few million dollars in the bank. Thanks, great advice.
You keep repeating that you know a lot and I am sure you do but your arguments fall short of actual information. You keep saying things that "you need to learn" which I tolerate and try to be respectful despite I really don't enjoy being patronised.
Besides, I want to note that the real issue for me is not the %30 or %15 or whatever cut Apple takes. The real issue is that Apple/Google/Amazon or any other company can cut you off if they want. At this point, I think these services must be regulated like utility, i.e. businesses that depend on these must be guaranteed to be treated equally and fairly. Apple is has done fine for the most part but IMHO what we need is rights, not all that BS about making Apple change their software to accommodate something.
30% is a bad deal because it was a one-sided affair.
Let's see your reaction when they crank it up to 50%, 70% or even more. Your arguments are going to be exactly the same, right?
> At this point, I think these services must be regulated like utility, i.e. businesses that depend on these must be guaranteed to be treated equally and fairly.
This is exactly the crux of this court case. Apple is abusing its position, it has turned itself into a utility and there is no way to opt out and switch to another utility.
There isn't going to be any reaction because they can't crank it up to 50 or 70 percent because developers would leave. Which means it's not a monopoly.
Developers wouldn't leave, the apple app store generates so much revenue that it would be much more profitable than android even if they lost half of it. What would happen is that governments all over the world would quickly rush to regulate Apples power away, that is what Apple is worried about and why they lowered it for small developers to 15% already, they aren't worried about competition here.
> Developers wouldn't leave, the apple app store generates so much revenue that it would be much more profitable than android even if they lost half of it.
You're countering your own point. The fact that there is so much money to be made on the app store, is why they have a right to charge 30%. They created the platform, and made it a great place to buy apps for users, and a lucrative place to sell apps for developers.
iPhone users are wealthier than Android users, that is the main reason the platform is more lucrative. Apple did a great job creating phones that users wants and charges a premium for them, which is great. What is not so great is that Apple then uses their dominance in the premium phone market to become the gatekeeper of a majority of phone app revenue, resulting in Apple taking a 30% cut of most app sales in the world. They don't have the most phones, no, but they have most of the phone app market.
And as phones are taking over phone apps are becoming an ever more important part of our lives. Apple can't just sit there and charge 30% of phone apps forever, that starves an upcoming market and holds back progress.
