So now the bill aims to control how much the dev makes? This bill should be shot down, the sooner the better.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Arizona Advances Bill That Will Let Developers Skirt Apple's In-App Purchase Rules
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
That amazingly is what some are hoping for. Or they are hoping to control Apples commissions. I wonder how people would feel if the government stepped in and enacted a law controlling the compensation of office workers.
The developer paid Apple an annual fee to have access to that platform, and Apple's tremendous profitability from the iPhone is due to the utility for customers that independent developers create for it.
It was the arrival of 3rd party apps that made the iPhone a hit, and the presence of 3rd party apps that makes Apple's platforms viable.
If anyone is getting the free ride, it's Apple.
It's not a free ride, it's a mutually beneficial cooperation. Epic does want to turn it into a free ride: they want to financially benefit from the platform without contributing anything in return. It is true that revenue from successful developers is used to make Apple rich, but it is also used to support the devs who are just starting out and can use all the infrastructure without risking much capital. It's a good system. The only problem I see is that Apple is judge, jury and executioner in this. This is what needs to be regulated.
Epic still has to pay the developer programme membership to participate in the market.
They're making the same contribution to the platform that every other developer makes.
What Epic, and Basecamp, and every other 3rd party supporting these regulations (which are blossoming across America, and the rest of the world, with new ones being announced every few days) are arguing, is that Apple should not receive a cut of their revenue to pay Apple's costs, given that the devs' choice to make software for Apple's platform is the primary enabler for Apple's ability to make profits on their iPhone hardware.
Anyone who thinks an iPhone without 3rd party apps would be even remotely as successful as one with, is living in a fantasyland - ALL of that delta in value between an app-less, and an app-filled iPhone ecosystem is down to third parties, not Apple. When is Apple going to start kicking a percentage of their phone hardware revenue to the developers whose apps make that iPhone a viable product?
Does anyone think an iPhone with only Apple in-house apps would have any chance in the market against Android? It's well documented that it was the lack of 3rd party apps that killed Windows Phone - In fact Windows Phone is a wonderfull illustration of the difference between Apple with, and without 3rd party apps, because the Windows phones were universally praised for their hardware (which was well before Apple's silicon began accelerating away from the rest of the market), and operating system. Their problem, was a lack of Apps - Windows Phone, is the iPhone without 3rd party apps.
More specifically, 3rd parties don't see why they should be forced to buy transaction processing and download hosting services from Apple for a price of 15-30% of their revenue, when functionally equivilent services are available to them for between 4-6% of revenue on the open market. That is the key question on which all these cases will turn - that the financial processing and downloading hosting services are separate products and services (for regulatory purposes) from the Appstore directory / market that Apple offers, and is requiring 3rd party developers to buy in order to participate in said marketplace.
I used to do comic conventions - the convention owner offered a deal where you could rent a big tv screen for your booth, but if you could find one cheaper yourself, you could still bring in your own flatscreen. The rental of the TV was a separate service offered by the owner of the marketplace. The convention owner didn't require you to also buy his rental furniture. You had to have public liability insurance, but he couldn't require you to buy public liability from him if you had your own.
None of these 3rd party developers are saying Apple shouldn't be able to offer transaction processing and download hosting at whatever price they like - because Apple's deal might be good for the sort of developer who doesn't want to roll their own solution - I pay 30% of my cover price on the Apple Books store, because I don't know how to roll a licencing, download, DRM and update server myself. What 3rd paty devs, and regulator's cases hinge on, is that 3rd party devs shouldn't be able to be compelled to buy the seperate transaction processing and download hosting service from Apple if they are capable of doing them themselves, in order to participate in the marketplace, which they've already paid to be a part of with their dev. programme membership fees.
Now, if maintaining that marketplace on a cost-recovery basis (since Apple is making profit on the iPhone without providing a cut back to 3rd party developers) requires more money than the current dev. programme generates, they should up the dev programme membership price, and maybe offer to let devs pay that off with a 15-30% cut until they reach that threahold. There's any number of solutions to the problem, which don't require Epic giving Apple 10s, if not 100s of millions of dollars a year, to get the exact same service from Apple, that a 10-copy-selling $1 app gets for $1.50.
*edit* "but it's Apple's market, they should be able to set the rules"
No, that's just the point, governments set the rules, not companies. It remains to be seen what Apple will do, to try to "skirt" the rules, once they are set.
Last edited:
How can something be both essential and not essential. It’s either or. Elderly has more medical issues than some 18 year old. And they get by just fine without smartphones.
I think you are making a good case for let the market speak for itself. 3rd parties aren't forced into anything, it's a completely voluntary opt-in system into a company that holds a minority share of the market. Using the iphone as a dev to make a living or promote some free app is strictly voluntary and the cost is nominal. $99.
This is all about having government interfere with a business model that has been legit thus far. Any changes through regulation will benefit the big guy, the small guy won't reap anything material.
No, you're completely mis-stating "the market".
The Market in question, is not "Smartphones" make up of iOS, Android etc.
The market currently under investigation, is iOS. Apple is being investigated for how Apple behaves within the iOS Marketplace. Android's relative market share is irrelevant to that case.
The fact is, your entire argument hinges on the necessity to define The Market in a way that is not the current trend world-wide for market definitions and competition regulators, indeed is in a way that is not supported by most of the history of previous antitrust case law (which can drill down to very small segments of an economy to define a competitive imbalance in a "market").
Governments should "interfere" in business models. That's why Architects and property developers can't save a few bucks by making doorways too narrow for wheelchairs, why they can't skimp on lifts and accessibility ramps, why they can't decide illuminated Exit signs aren't aesthetically pleasing, or sugar levels in food can be whatever they like.
Your argument is simply to demand that an industry that has been radically under-regulated for far too long, avoid having to accept the same standards of regulation every other industry deals with as a basic fact of doing business.
Membership is currently priced at symbolic $99 per year. It is basically administration fee, certificate management and non-priority access to support. It is in no way sufficient to cover the infrastructure usage cost that a successful app developer like Epic incurs.
So we are talking either about massively increasing the fee for everyone (good buy open-source, academia or indie developer) or to scale the fee based on the app success. In the second case, the success is commonly measured by the revenue... which is exactly how App Store and many other licensing services work now.
I understand your argument, but I don't think it holds up to scrutiny. The 10-copy app and Epic pay exactly the same fee: a set percentage of their revenue. This is a common business model for marketplaces or licensors. It encourages wide adoption while ensuring profits. There is a good reason why this is the model used by almost everyone these days. Epic themselves charge 5% of revenue for game devs that use Unreal Engine. If you are complaining that it is unfair or that it contradicts the economical reality, you'd need to tear down most of world's economy.
If you argue that business operation set by a private company constitutes a market, then I fail to understand the unhealthy obsession with iOS. Why aren't you telling Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Steam or — well, Epic — how to conduct their business? After all, it's totally unfair that Funcom has to pay Epic millions of $$ in fees while Peter who lives in his mother's basement can publish erotic games based on UE4 for free — both use the engine in the same way.
The app developers annual fee is not to have a free ride of the platform and build your business on it totally free. You would be completely naive to think that $99 a year to have access to Apples development tools would give you a complete free business. Try doing that on other market places (like eBay or Amazon) and see how far you get. And the success of the iPhone is combination of many things, not simply developers work. Developers did not make windows mobile a hit, from what I can remember, did they? Developers should pay the fee for the profit they generate on a platform they HAVE NOT build or take their apps somewhere else. But pretty sure they won’t, because they love the profits, they simply do get a bit greedy.
I think you are misstating the market. Epic will make the case you are trying to put forth, leading to a conclusion Apple holds a monopoly in App distribution. That is not the way necessarily the courts will see this and Apple will present an opposing point of view.
Governments should *not* interfere in business models. It did that already with AT&T and that didn't turn out so well for the American consumer. Yes there should be some regulated industries for obvious reasons, especially when life, limb and your money are at stake.
Your argument is that government should step in and regulate everything for the greater good. There is no greater good, consumers will not come out ahead.
Exactly.
Epic makes their games available on multiple platforms... Apple, Android, Nintendo, XBox, and Playstation.
But they apparently only have a problem with the way Apple and Google operate their stores and the rules therein.
Are Apple and Google doing it wrong? I guess that's for the courts to decide. It'll certainly be interesting.
Epic's case is that through doing payment processing, and download hosting themselves, Apple isn't incurring any infrastructure cost on their behalf.
What is so hard for people to understand about this?
Nintendo, XBox and Playstation sell their consoles at a loss, making the colsoles cheaper to increase the addressable market for games, and so developers are willing to give them a larger cut of the sales to make up for that.
Apple and Google (Apple especially) price their devices high, profitably high, and high enough that they're willing to reduce the addressable market for developers to increase profits per unit.
Games consoles sold at a loss, are not compatible to Cellphones sold for a profit.
Well, my case is that if I use Epic's Unreal Engine 4 in my game, Epic is incurring no costs on my behalf. Why am I supposed to pay them a % of my game's revenue? Why is so hard for people to understand about this?
Your argument is the naive primitive wanna be capitalist "I am not paying for what I am not using" with complete disregard about how economic systems work. Funnily enough this argument tends to be used by people in privileged positions.
It's not about developers willing give them a larger cut, this is Apples platform. For $99 a developer (like Epic) can make $700M in the app store. The roi on $99 is amazing.
Government should stay out of regulating private industry, unless it violates some laws.
That sounds like a problem that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony has to deal with...
Not Apple and Google.
The three console makers chose that business model. The government shouldn't force other companies to adopt a different model.
There is literally no aspect of business that is not regulated by government in some way. What is happening to Apple now, is just that a wild west, which was faster at moving the curve ahead of regulation, than regulation could catch up.
That initial growth spurt is slowing up and becoming incumbent - and so regulation will follow, in the same way safety standards caught up for cars (seatbelts, gas tanks, ABS, airbags) etc.
The unreal engine is not necessary to make video games for ANY platform, not even Epic's own game store. In fact if you develop with Unity, it's cheaper to sell on Epic's game store, than it is to sell an Unreal game.
That analogy is broken.
I'm actually arguing from a proudly socialist perspective, that Government should be the sole arbiter of all rules by which economic systems are organised, and that regulation at all levels of business should be the fundamental organising principle.
I had my way, Apple would be forced to make the interfaces between OS, Hardware, Applications, Online Services, and content stores occur through openly documented transfer points that allow drop-in replacement of any of them by third party alternatives, and they would be banned from tying any of them to any other of them. macOS would have to stand on its own two feet, as a retail product, the macintosh would have to stand on its own two feet as a retail product, without any exclusivity to macOS, iCloud, iMessage, Airdrop etc.
It's the libertarian capitalist-theology that argues Apple made a market, so Apple should set whatever rules it likes within its chainlink fence compound, like some corporate apocalyptic jonestown cultleader.
Which, for many developers, is plenty.
Nobody asked Apple to create all this infrastructure, though. Yes, I'm sure it helps many indie devs. But also, many devs did just fine setting up their own shops in the pre-App Store era. You'd open a browser, search for an app, download it, run it. There are pros and cons to this approach, but, again, Apple didn't have to insert itself as the "infrastructure" provider. (Which, frankly, is not that expensive.)
If Apple want money for hosting apps, they can charge that money. Make it a $199/yr tier or whatever.
If, OTOH, Apple wants to do what they claim to do, which is to act as a store the way e.g. Sony for the PlayStation does, to market stand-out apps, etc., then they really need to do a better job.
"Others do it, too" and "it's a fair model" are different arguments.
You're making the case of life, limb and money with the car analogy.
There is no wild west of app store management (and life, limb and your financial future is not involved). That is the case Epic will try to make. Whether they are successful is anybody's guess. But I'm hoping not (successful).
How can you claim to adopt a socialist perspective if your attitude basically boils down to allowing the rich (Epic and friends) to "pay no taxes"?
Ok, I see certain merit in that. Although, I would confer of course that Apple's dictatorial control over the store is ultimately what enables the ecosystem to meet certain levels of quality, security and convenience. Apple has a vision and they have build a system that works according to their vision. You propose to remove them from the arbiter position, basically completely deregulating the app market.
I can see how that would make sense but I don't believe that the end result will be a better place. A deregulated model as you propose would give too much leeway to predatory data-harvesting companies (that can offer a compelling free product in exchange for user's privacy), would favor the rich and successful developer while penalizing the small indie dev groups and open-source community (because costs for infrastructure services will inevitably rise) and finally, would be a huge setback for user privacy (as users will be forced to divulge and store personal data with multiple groups instead of one central arbiter). This is not socialism. This is brutal wild capitalism.
I think you are focusing too much on Apple's dictatorial role and not enough on how all little things fit together. Mind, I totally agree that Apple's control of the iOS market needs to be regulated. The ultimate dictatorial power Apple wields cannot be healthy. But I believe that these issues can be addressed without taking away things that makes iOS great: privacy, security, convenience, software quality and low cost of entry for an underprivileged developer.
I have no idea what the libertarian capitalist-theology agues (or even what it is). I argue that Apple has created a balanced system where successful players support the weaker ones and your are advocating to tear it down
Eu regulators finalising their charges against the App Store monopoly also. ?
www.reuters.com
EXCLUSIVE Apple faces EU antitrust charge on Spotify complaint -sources
IPhone maker Apple (AAPL.O) could face an EU antitrust charge sheet in the coming weeks following a 2019 complaint by music streaming service Spotify (SPOT.N), two people familiar with the matter said.