Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644045/apple-defends-app-store-policies-antitrust-eu-spotify

by jmsflknr • 7 years ago

75 56 7 years ago

woodgrainz• 7 years ago

Apple's market share is low enough that it may continue to be unchallenged by enforcing all its own apps to be the default apps. Antitrust will probably not apply to them, I suspect.

MBCook• 7 years ago

The US government (for example) doesn’t care about Apple’s world wide market share, they care about the US.

And in the US Apple’s market share is MUCH higher.

dep_b• 7 years ago

Not even close to anti-trust triggering size though

Retric• 7 years ago

Still 10% below Android though.

runevault• 7 years ago

This gets into an interesting consideration around what monopoly means. Up until now it's always been about market share, but the interesting trick apple has pulled is, while not having a great chunk of the market, they DO have a massive chunk of mobile app revenue, hence mobile devs so focused on iOS in spite of total available user base relative to Android.

mcphage3• 7 years ago

I am not a lawyer by any stretch, but I remember from conversations here recently about anti-trust, is that it all depends on how the "market" is defined. Apple has a non-monopoly share of the smartphone market, or even the app market, but they do have a monopoly share of the iPhone market. Sometimes, that's the relevant metric.

zepto6• 7 years ago

By that logic, any manufacturer who doesn’t produce a commodity is automatically a monopolist.

bearjaws• 7 years ago

If Microsoft defaulting IE8 can result in a antitrust lawsuit, I believe we will see the same applied here when it comes to assistants, google maps, browsers and such.

adgasf• 7 years ago

Apple needs to allow you to change the default apps (similar to how you can change the keyboard) for this argument to hold up.

mcphage3• 7 years ago

Also allow apps to allow purchases inside without going through Apple's in-app purchases. Maybe they need to decide on a case-by-case basis, or maybe only for apps for companies with a large external presence, but not being able to buy eBooks through the Kindle app, because Apple wants it to go through their own in-app purchases instead of Amazon's own payment gateway, is frustrating.

zepto6• 7 years ago

If they allow enough In app purchases not to go through the store then they have no way to collect money from anyone, Since all apps could then just collect their money that way.

If you limit it only to an anointed group of large companies then you have formed a cartel, which itself is likely illegal.

balabaster2• 7 years ago

Also...

- Kindle

- Kobo

- Audible

- Audiobooks.com

They're all equally frustrating as one another on iPhone. It pisses me off that I can't just do a one click purchase and listen on my iPhone or a "Read next book in series" button. I have to log into the website and purchase and go through a whole fucking song and dance just to get a book to listen to on my journey. The user experience for this use case quite frankly sucks balls.

I love my iPhone, I tried to become an Android lover a while back but went back to my iPhone because I want a device that just works without making me jump through a million hoops and my iPhone does - except for this use case which is about a thousand times worse than Android.

elliekelly• 7 years ago

Exactly. I would even go a step further, considering Microsoft’s antitrust issues from tying Netscape to the Windows OS: most of the iPhone’s preloaded default applications shouldn’t be there at all. Ideally users would be prompted at setup whether they’d like to install the Apple version.

gowld3• 7 years ago

IE, not Netscape. And didn't history show that shipping a default browser in the OS (which can be used to install additional alternate browsers) wasn't so bad after all?

Tiktaalik• 7 years ago

Also I'd need to believe that these competing apps are genuinely on the same playing field as Apple's.

For example, why is there still no Spotify app for the Watch that matches Apple's Music app? I can't believe Spotify isn't interested in making one...

judge2020• 7 years ago

Spotify says Apple didn't allow them [0]:

When Apple launches their new Apple Watch, they dismiss our proposals and won’t work with us to develop an app for it.

Apple denies this[1]:

When Spotify submitted their Apple Watch app in September 2018, we reviewed and approved it with the same process and speed with which we would any other app. In fact, the Spotify Watch app is currently the No. 1 app in the Watch Music category.

0: https://timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

1: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/addressing-spotifys-c...

pwinnski2• 7 years ago

The message here seems to be that if companies don’t like Apple’s policies, they’ve got other options. Go find your riches on Android or make a Roku app. But developers have a huge financial incentive to be in the App Store. It’s often been reported that iOS users spend more money on apps than people with Android phones, and Apple leans on that advantage.

Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive.

It's a reasonable argument, although I think it's unknowable whether it's true.

Legally, it might not matter.

wayoutthere2• 7 years ago

I tend to agree with this argument, and here’s why: Apple’s brand across the board is about controlling every aspect of the user experience so they can make it a cohesive experience the user enjoys. They do this at the expense of short-term monetary gains from things like advertising, and don’t give a damn about making life difficult for their business partners. This is not the result of their success but likely the reason for it. There’s a reason it was so culturally difficult for them to license “clone” Mac hardware in the 1990s; it’s just not in their DNA.

They understand that the end user relationship is all that matters. For Apple’s brand to succeed, they have to own the relationship entirely so they can protect their users from bad actors. That is literally why a large segment of people choose Apple products. Do iPhones have malware problems on the scale of Android? No, because of Apple’s heavy-handed control of the App Store. I honestly think Apple would shut down the App Store entirely in favor of something more universal like WASM before ceding control of the user experience. General platform security / privacy also benefit from this approach.

bitpush• 7 years ago

Are we justifying potentially illegal behavior by saying "that's their brand" and it helps them get wealthy in the long run?

Monsanto does the same with seeds. They do RnD, develop seeds and force farmers to buy seeds directly from them, control end to end and probably produce higher-yield crops with lesser diseases. It is their "brand" but should we justify that behavior?

kyle-rb• 7 years ago

Apple's argument would seem to be that this financial incentive is the direct result of their policies, so forcing them to change those policies would reduce or eliminate this financial incentive.

I think that Apple's policies are definitely what makes people spend more money through the app store, but that in itself is only really a financial incentive for Apple. Changing their policies would mean more apps distributed outside the app store, which would probably mean more money for developers (but less for Apple).

For an example of this, see Fortnite being distributed outside of the Google Play store. Google didn't get a cut of all the Fortnite in-app purchases, but Apple did.

alienreborn• 7 years ago

Relevant article by former App Approval Chief at Apple: https://medium.com/@phillipshoemaker/apple-v-everybody-59030...

danShumway• 7 years ago

From the article:

Target, for example, is a standard, old-school brick and mortar shop. You go to find specific products and walk up and down aisles. When you find something that interests you, you don’t purchase it through that product. Instead you bring it to the Target checkout clerk, and they will charge you for it. And believe me, Target gets their fair share of the purchase of that item. If Target finds that the product has stickers telling you to purchase this item from Amazon or another location for a lesser amount, Target will remove the item from the shelves, and rightfully so. It is their brand that is bringing in the customers, not the products.

It seems at first glance like this would largely contradict Apple's earlier arguments that purchases are between app developers and consumers, and that it's just an intermediary in the process[0]. Anyone willing to comment about a subtlety to this argument I could be missing?

[0] https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/05/13/apple-app-store-lawsu...

tguedes2• 7 years ago

I don't believe it contradicts it. Apple claims that it does not set the price, the developers do. That's what they mean when they are just the intermediary, they facilitate the transaction but are not part of it.

I think his example is poor because Target does set the prices on products, for the most part. I think something better would be a flee market. The flee market operators provide services to facilitate the sales of the vendors and they can also choose which vendors are allowed to sell in their market, but they do not control the prices the vendors sell at.

Todd• 7 years ago

The analogy sounds good, up until the product has stickers telling you to purchase this item from Amazon. That's disingenuous. The stickers in this analogy would tell customers that they can go to the product's own web site to register for a subscription. That's what Apple doesn't allow.

txcwpalpha• 7 years ago

I feel strongly that his comparison to Target doesn't really apply. Shopping at Target can be compared to browsing the App Store, but it should not be compared to In App Purchases.

When you install an app from the App Store, Apple obviously is involved because they are providing the marketplace. It's like walking up to the cashier at Target and paying for a laptop. Of course Target gets a cut, it's their store. But after you take that laptop home, Target doesn't have a claim on anything related to it anymore. If you use that same laptop to sign up for Spotify, Target doesn't have claim to a 30% cut of the Spotify subscription.

I wonder how Apple would feel if Target started requiring a 30% cut from Apple for every app store purchase made on iPhones that were bought at Target?

ProAm• 7 years ago

The comparison to Target doesnt apply at all because I can go buy the same product from Target at Walmart or Bestbuy or etc..... Sure Target makes money off of the item but I do not have to choose shop at Target unless Im buying a Target brand item.

pkamb2• 7 years ago

He was also recently on a podcast with Mark Gurman: https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1133500919667187712

just_myles2• 7 years ago

" (Apple takes a 30 percent cut of subscriptions for the first year a customer is signed up and 15 percent for each year thereafter."

That is a considerable amount of paper.. How do you make any money when their cut is so high? Anybody with experience? I wonder how this shakes out annually with an app like Netflix.

pwinnski2• 7 years ago

Netflix doesn't give up 30% or 15%. It's listed as an example of a "Reader" app, so Netflix subscriptions take place entirely outside of Apple's infrastructure[0] and therefore Apple get zero of that money.

How do you make any money...

The remaining 70%/85% is a pretty good start. As they say before that point, "developers have earned more than $120 billion worldwide"

[0] The point Apple glosses over here is that Netflix isn't even allowed to provide a link back to their site for subscribing within the app, which seems difficult to defend.

just_myles2• 7 years ago

Fair enough. Still a rather large margin.

More to the article's/ your point, not being able to provide a link back to your app is kind of kind of anti-competitive. They want you to subscribe using their own systems.

pkamb2• 7 years ago

Netflix only recently removed in-app subscriptions; before that they were paying X% to Apple for every subscriber who paid via iTunes. And still are for anyone who is still paying that way. Although surely it was a sweetheart deal always below 30%, and potentially below the 15%.

xvector2• 7 years ago

The point Apple glosses over here is that Netflix isn't even allowed to provide a link back to their site for subscribing within the app, which seems difficult to defend.

How is it difficult to defend? If I am selling my product in a Target, I am not allowed to put stickers all over it telling people to buy it from Amazon instead. No reasonable storefront would allow this, really.

ppeetteerr3• 7 years ago

Don't sell on the App Store if you can't handle the 30% margin.

ppeetteerr3• 7 years ago

What a joke! Apple made a product people enjoy using and an App Store people trust. Now, companies are complaining that Apple is stifling innovation because their App Store is charging 30% and making competitive products. Tough shit. It's their walled garden. Don't build for the App Store if you're afraid of competition.

pier25• 7 years ago

It's funny that Apple shows competing alternatives to Safari on iOS when in fact all iOS browsers use the same engine.

https://www.apple.com/ios/app-store/principles-practices/

stcredzero• 7 years ago

But the most interesting parts of this new site relate to competition. In one section, Apple goes over the core, built-in apps on iOS and lists the many popular third-party options that are available from the App Store in each category as alternatives.

I dare someone to try it. Take all of the default apps and hide them away in a folder somewhere and replace all of them with alternatives. Let me know 1) the quality of your user experience and 2) of all of the annoyances, how many of them are due to the lack of "special" capabilities and integration only available to the in-house apps?

anfilt• 7 years ago

2 things I really hope from this. Apple can no longer block side-loading, and the dumb restriction on browser engines goes away, but I guess I will see how this law suite goes.

Also It's hilarious how they claim it's competitive. You can only install one app store.

singularity2001• 7 years ago

I had three apps denied because they where 'too close to existing Apple products'. (They where not). Break that monopoly!

Ourotica• 7 years ago

If you think it's tough dealing with Apple, try running an app that allows adult content.

We're not allowed in the app store, we're not welcome on any major payment platform, and thanks to Apple dragging their heels on PWA support in Safari, we don't have any access to push notifications (or most of the other major native features).

The vast majority of our traffic is on iOS, but we're completely locked out from providing a native experience thanks to Apple's bullshit policies.

ppeetteerr3• 7 years ago

The policies are everywhere

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/29/18644537/google-marijuana...

Apple’s defense of the App Store just shows how hard it is to compete with Apple

Related Stories