I think the standard response should be to allow the in-app signup/purchase with a 42% marked up rate and a very clear line item that it is the "Apple platform tax, not charged via other distributors".
Worth doing the same to Google IMO.
I think the "right" amount to charge would be something like a standard credit card processor - 30 cents + 3% or so. Maybe a flat 5 or 10% for apps under a certain price. I can't imagine Apple's payment processing and app screening being much more expensive than Visa's payment processing and fraud detection.
You're not paying for the payment processing. You never have been paying for the payment processing. You're paying for the fact that iOS devices are an extremely valuable retail space and being able to sell there is worth a lot of money to your sales funnel.
Yes but I think what tomlagier is saying is that the "right" thing to charge for is the payment processing (he also mentions app screening), as opposed to charging for the privilege of being allowed to run on Apple devices. Otherwise you get into all these issues that are potentially "wrong," at least from the perspective of people who agree with the general concept of antitrust law.
It's not just whether something is extremely valuable. App store as a "retail space" wouldn't be so valuable if you could easily buy iOS apps in other app stores. From the perspective of an iOS device owner, Apple has a monopoly on the retailing of apps.
Apple isn’t just providing payment processing. The entire development environment and SDK, app hosting, install and update, services like Data Sync (whatever they call it), Push notifications, etc.
If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA.
I didn't say they were. I said Apple's role is comparable, in that it is not deserving of automatic 30% of revenue. It may be a lot of services, but it still doesn't cost a lot per user and per app, especially when compared to what a brick and mortar retail store does.
And it certainly doesn't make sense for an app like Netflix, which is comparatively expensive per month because of how much use it gets, how much bandwidth it consumes, and all the licensing and production costs. Imagine if Netflix had to pay 30% to Apple.
Netflix gets away with not paying that 30% because they have leverage. But smaller apps can't. Sounds to me like exactly what antitrust is for.
"If Apple let apps side-load from a website, and not access any of the iCloud or push services... you’re basically back to a PWA."
If they wanted to (or were forced to by antitrust action), they could allow third party services to do all those things, and for them to interoperate. They choose not to because they make ungodly amounts of money the way they do things now.
That's not what he is saying. He is saying that Apple is closer to being a credit card company than a retailer. When you buy something at Walmart, Walmart gets a cut, and the credit card company gets a cut. But Walmart's cut covers the costs of what they add to the transaction, which includes shipping and warehousing the product, providing a store, staffing the store, providing heating and air conditioning to the store, etc etc. The credit card company presumably takes a much smaller cut, because the costs of what they add is much less.
With Walmart, if the store is charging a lot over their costs, the consumer can choose another store. If the credit card company is charging too much, people can pay cash (or stores can refuse that card, etc). It isn't perfect, but at least there is some degree of competition forcing the price toward the costs of providing the various services.
Ultimately the reason Apple can charge so much is because consumers have limited alternatives. Bundling, application barrier to entry, etc.
The consumer has the same alternative as well as the app maker. The app maker can charge 43% more for an in app subscription as well as offer a cheaper subscription on their site.
Consumers can price compare just like in retail.
Why would Apple allow an app maker advertise a cheaper price in its store? Would Walmart let a manufacture advertise that they can get a cheaper price at Amazon?
Even for free apps, Apple still has to maintain the store, pay for storage, compute and bandwidth for assets, CloudKit storage, developers, reviewers, writers for their daily stories, etc.
Worth doing the same to Google IMO.
I think the "right" amount to charge would be something like a standard credit card processor - 30 cents + 3% or so. Maybe a flat 5 or 10% for apps under a certain price. I can't imagine Apple's payment processing and app screening being much more expensive than Visa's payment processing and fraud detection.