But people should also be able to get apps from whatever store they want.
(Ground rules all app stored would have to follow based on technical, security, and legal concerns would be fine too, IMO.)
Of course Apple would never go for that, so we'll end up with whatever mess legal processes can wring out of them.
This the answer. The app store monopoly doesn't really matter, the real tyranny is needing Apple's cryptographic blessing to run software on our own computers. This should be literally illegal. Restore our computer freedom and their app store rent seeking becomes irrelevant.
I think it's been a net positive overall. The percentage of people that want to do and install more with it is small.
But that power is not more dangerous than having guns, right? So.. while I can apply for a gun license, I can't apply for an unrestricted computing license, so something is wrong here, don't you think? Unless you believe guns are less dangerous.
The web. Without scare walls or hidden "enable downloads" menu settings.
And apps should no longer have to use first party payment rails, first party authentication/sign in rails, or be forced to jump through review or upgrade hoops.
I'm not too sure about that, for non-technical users the warnings before installing an APK on Android are very likely a good thing. There's a lot of malware out there and, similar to running a downloaded Exe on Windows, you should at least explicitly confirm it's execution.
Happy because you have nobody in your life in a vulnerable position to be taken advantage of the inevitable malware that will be installed on their device as a result of your wish.
Or sad because those people are most likely to be grandparents or elderly aunts and uncles. Perhaps you never even got to know them.
It’s funny how they are their own counter example. They have no leg to stand on.
But what really happened is that apple kept a stranglehold on what more and more became a general computing device. And they've done enough anti-compettive maneuvers to have the EU make them open up. I wouldn't be surprised if the US eventually comes to a similar decision.
Apple may not be as blatant about it as the other big tech, but I hope it's not contentious to say that all three big companies needs a round of anti-trust overhaul.
I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
> I don’t think Apple is arguing that it is impossible to allow more open ways to install apps on iPhones. I think they’re saying that they don’t want to, and that they shouldn’t have to.
Apple volunteers the position that they couldn't possibly open the iOS ecosystem themselves, not just that they don't want to, making some very amusing claims in the process.[1] They also don't want to, but the more you dig into possible "whys", you get into a lot of troubling realities quickly.
Epic Games, on the other hand, is arguing that they actually should have to, at least to some extent. There are actually a lot of reasons why Apple's App Store practices might violate the law, and to my understanding, Epic Games is alleging that Apple's App Store practices constitute "illegal tying" whereby Apple unlawfully ties its payment processing service with its app distribution. That's far from the only potential legal issue that the App Store could face just based on current, existing law. (Note: I am not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt; but nothing I am saying is too original or groundbreaking.)
And of course, it's always worth remembering that what's legal today can be regulated tomorrow. I don't really believe lawmakers or the general public really have had enough time to take a look at the impact that Apple/Google app stores have had on the software market and decide if these practices should be legal. The EU seems to think they shouldn't, and while I don't agree with the EU on everything, I tend to agree.
[1]: https://observer.com/2021/05/even-craig-federighi-apples-hea...
Given how low morally they are, the room for improvement is massive and easy to move into. As you write, they didn't do it so far because they were not forced, and waiting for some good moral behavior 'just because it would be nice from them' is rather dumb.
I agree with you. But, as devil's advocate, why not suggest that Apple should be allowed to run as crappy a store as they want, while people should be free not to buy Apple?
This duopoly does not truly offer a lot of choice, so any criticism must happen from within the confines of the current reality.
I’m not going to tell a pedestrian who wants safer roads to stop being a participant in traffic, I accept that they have very little real choice.
Having to uncritically accept anything and everything the manufacturer of your device does is not really viable and is a recipe for a worse future.
They do in EU, because they were forced to.
AltStore PAL https://altstore.io/
Buildstore https://builds.io/
Aptoide https://en.aptoide.com
.. and so on
fact checking
Apple Tier 1 mandatory store services:
0.5€ Core Technology fee per install
2% Initial acquisition fee
5% Store service fee
Compare that to 20-30% that Apple's own AppStore take and its a bargain.
Even with Tier 2 with marketing tools, automatic updates, app recommendations, analytics dashboards, and promotional features the cost is only 10% for small business program members, 15% for others.
Compared to what?
Also, are we certain that a better alternative would really appear? E.g. I’m aware of f-droid and I’d install a similar ios libre software store, but I’m not aware of any, even in the EU where alt stores are possible.
I have no right to complain that I can't run Apple programs on a Windows computer, and Microsoft shouldn't be compelled to support MacOS software.
seems like you can get it to run on windows via wsl if you want to run apps built for macs on your windows machine
is there a need to complain? windows might not be putting in support for it, but unlike apple in their store, they arent actively preventing you from doing so
But I also, I guess, kinda just have a dumb thought about this whole ordeal. Broadly speaking, we are in a position where we, the general public with the backing of the government, want to change how a private corporation uses it's products that it sold to us. Not for any other reason that would shield us from harm or prevent risk, but rather because the corporation's products are so successful a lot of people use them too much! But wait! That's not actually true because there's enough products on the market that we don't actually need to use this product...but we like it because its incrementally the best and the chat bubbles are blue and applications run better and seem higher quality (which is a selling point of the product we are now actively dismantling but I digress...)
I know its tiring to use food cliches, but imagine if like, I make a business selling apple pies and my apple pies are incredibly successful and everyone eats them all the time and now all of a sudden I need to also guarantee that my business can make cherry pies because my apple pies sell so damn well. But truth is, its not really about the apple pies at all. It's about my baking trays. We actually just want to make sure that the baking trays of my business are now capable of also cooking for cherry pies even though that's got nothing to do with my fucking business. I sell apple pies. I'm so confused
Apple is dictating the behavior of every business operating in the digital market (Apple itself brags that this amounts to over $1 trillion, with a T, in economic activity), with the App Store, which has 70-80% profit margins, and numerous dev horror stories. Rejecting your update over something they previously approved, or something they let all your competitors do. Forcing their IAP system on you. Dictating what links you can put in your app, how you present prices (don't call out the Apple tax), what you can tell consumers in emails. Forcing their direct competitors to have an inferior user experiences (can't subscribe in Spotify, can't buy books in Kindle; oh, and bundling Apple Music/Books/TV with the OS, and advertising them throughout the OS). Threatening retaliation if you complain publicly ("If you run to the press, it never helps.") Blocking VPNs or secure messaging in authoritarian countries, and you can't sideload. Sabotaging the web to keep their monopoly (even trying to kill PWAs recently).
Apple feels entitled to a higher profit margin on your business than your business will ever achieve for itself! That's nuts!
No monopoly required.
All that is required is that they have large marketshare, an important product, and it is difficult for users to change to alternatives, or avoid its uncompetitive behavior.
Choosing a phone involves balancing numerous features of devices. There is no phone market with the thousands of competing devices it would take to really cover what a customer might ideally want. So choices often balance so many things, involve so much practical investment, that they make switching devices over a few things, or even many things, from awfully unpleasant to very difficult.
And, with great market power, comes great responsibility: to not become a barrier to competitive innovation and hard work.
By definition, Apple's strict gatekeeping App Store, a significant feature on a significant general purpose computing platform, is anti-competitive. There is no technical reason why side loading or side-stores couldn't thrive, on such a general purpose device intertwined in all our lives.
Onerous fees and terms and selective limitation (relative to Apple's own offerings) for developers make it even more anticompetitive.
Of course, anyone who likes having fewer options, or just the options they have now, is free to not explore others. For now and forever. Amen.
Yes, because it's "we the people" not "we the corporations".
But that's not where we are. I think it makes sense to treat both Apple and Google as de facto monopolies with respect to the smartphone market, and impose some regulation on what they have to allow and how much they can charge for it.
on the other hand, it wasn’t all that long ago that we had many smart phone markers and operating systems, all with different strategies. It’s possible that the market did decide…
Equally, pretty much no iPhone user (outside of tech circles) cares about the App Store monopoly for iPhone. The policy is well known, and hasn't changed in 15 years.
Indeed many (not all) tech folk who complain about the App Store still went out and bought an iPhone.
The raw truth is that the market did decide. And no we don't need regulation. Apple and Google have different enough policies for there to be choice. In some countries Android has dominant market share.
It's a matter of multiple independent legal decisions at this point that both of these companies have engaged in repeated, sustained, illegal anti-competitive behaviors, so the extent to which there was a "market" that voted is highly arguable.
Sailfish OS does exactly that, but it has a number of limitations and added friction due to legal and technical reasons.
And choosing between two systems is really not much of a "choice". Right now there is a story on the front page about Android app requiring devs to validate their ID, even for side-loaded apps.
Epic Games is a developer and publisher making billions off tricking children into paying for worthless virtual goods. Fuck ‘em if they can’t make a living with the 30% Apple cut.
Why did so many people pick iPhone or Android over their prior competitors? Because the developers wrote software there. Why did the devs write software there? Because people were picking those ecosystems. It was an upward spiral that changed the world a LOT in 18 years, but it was all started with Apple—being a hardware company—selling premium-quality hardware, and then adding their support for third party development.
What about Steam? Can a publisher sell a game for ~$45 in their store and $60 in Steam, or is it against some TOC?
I'll just reproduce FatalLogic's last comment here:
""" In the class action case[0], which was allowed to go forward by the court last year, it is claimed that Valve told someone:
"This includes communications from Valve that “‘the price on Steam [must be] competitive with where it’s being sold elsewhere’” and that Valve “‘wouldn’t be OK with selling games on Steam if they are available at better prices on other stores, even if they didn’t use Steam keys.’” Dkt. No. 343 ¶ 158, 160 (quoting emails produced at VALVE_ANT_0598921, 0605087). "
(This is a new case, not the 2021 suit, which was rejected by the court, then amended and refiled, later with an additional plaintiff added)
[0]https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.29... """
So a US court of law has decided that it's at least possible that this isn't true.
Phones are essential. You can't get a job without one. It's impossible to stay connected or navigate without one. You can't even order food in a restaurant these days without your smartphone. Yet two companies control and tax the entirety of mobile computing.
Scratch that. Mobile computing *IS* computing for most people. It's the only computer or internet portal they know.
And two companies own it all. The passport to the modern world is owned and taxed by two trillion dollar companies.
2000's-era DOJ-litigated antitrust abuser Microsoft dreams that they had this much of a monopoly.
The Halloween papers sounded evil. Mobile computing monopolization is evil.
Here's what needs to be done:
1. Web installs. Both companies need to allow web native installs without scare walls or buried settings flags that need to be enabled. First class apps from the web, with no scaring users about it. We have all the technology to make this work safely: permissions, app scanning, signature blacklisting, etc.
2. Defaults. Both companies need to be prevented from pushing their apps as defaults. No more default browsers, default wallets, default app stores, default photo galleries, default search engine, etc.
3. Taxation and control. Apps cannot be taxed on any transactions. Users must not be forced to "sign in" with the monopoly provider's identity system. Apps must not be forced to use the monopoly payment rails. Apps must not be forced to be human reviewed or update to the latest UI changes / SDK on a whim.
Mobile apps and platforms must work like desktop software.
We need this freedom and flexibility for consumers, and we need competition to oxygenate the tech sector and reward innovation. Capitalism shouldn't be easy - it should be hard to keep your spot at the top. Resting on the laurels of easily defended moats for twenty years while reaping some of the most outsized benefits in the industry has created lethargy and held us back.
Windows phones had a very enthusiastic but too-tiny following. Blackberry lost the plot with terrible hardware and software for the app era (developing an app for the Storm was enough to convince me to never get one of their phones). Symbian's S60 was too little too late in the US. Ubuntu, Mozilla, and others all tried various flavors of Linux and web based phones to no success.
I don't think you can really blame Google or Apple for any of these failures in the same way Microsoft could be blamed in the 90's for their abuses.
With that said, I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Google was forced to change how they handle third party app stores. iPhones will likely never be big enough for Apple to be forced to allow other stores in the US.
Top smartphone brand global market share: Samsung (20%), Apple (17%), Xiaomi (14%), vivo (9%), OPPO (8%).
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smar...
What? There are plenty of apps charging more when you buy currency/subscription on iOS compared to when you buy from their website, or in some cases Android app. Patreon is an example that made the loudest noise recently, but it’s been a widespread practice for years. That said Apple doesn’t (didn’t?) allow you to tell users that a cheaper option exists elsewhere.
Of course today, we're getting to the point where governments are going to probably start softly relying on citizens having smartphones that are either Android or iOS. This is terrible and completely the wrong way to go; it would be much better to depend on standards that anyone could implement. Even progressive web apps would be a better outcome than Android/iOS apps. Getting to this point definitely puts both Apple and Google in privileged positions wherein they pretty much do have to be treated like defacto monopolies, but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the outcome we want either.
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
I do agree that requiring specific platforms is a problem - we don't want a return to the IE6 or Flash-dominated eras where people who weren't on Windows were treated like sub-humans.
Either way, I would be fine with this, if there were a big, red, and scary button with a warning in iOS to turn the coddling off. I bought a phone, so I own it. If I choose to, there should be a way to let me control the hardware. Even Android phones don't have this, with bootloader unlocking disappearing. To be fair, there's a layer below that where you could also replace the XBL (Xtensible Boot Loader, on Qualcomm devices) if secure boot is off and the efuses aren't blown. But there are even fewere devices that have this.
You can also ship sandboxed apps on Desktop without the store (although I am not sure on how hard it is to auto-update them, usually stores handle that part), at least on Windows and macOS.
Stores handle storing the apps themselves and distributing updates, that part of the cost is real, plus they do manually review submissions (to some degree), but 30% is insane for that.
Better than Android sure, but let's not get too hyperbolic. There's less outright malware, but a ton of questionable crapware with bad practices. Let's not forget that Android phones definitely also do sandboxing and just-in-time permission prompts.
Even among major apps, maybe especially among major apps, the Apple App Store is full of apps that blatantly violate Apple's own policies, often including Apple's own apps too, much like the Google Play store. As a simple example, apps that put crucial notifications in the same category as advertisements are all over the place, despite this being a clear violation of the policies. There is plenty of enshittification on Apple platforms.
Beyond that, I can go onto my iPad and search something that is likely to be popular and find a ton of very questionable apps. For example, search "Grand Theft Auto". Scroll down slightly. That sure looks like a lot of very questionable garbage apps full of questionable advertisements. You can repeat this with tons of popular search terms. Yes, it's one thing to trust the sandbox, but are you really sure you feel safe installing all of those?
And sure, App Store review policies do stop most malware and unwanted tracking software from flowing through, but that doesn't mean you should gamble your life on it either. There are plenty of lapses all the time. Probably at least a few times a year, though obviously we only see the incidents that generate a lot of publicity. Just for fun, here's a few incidents over the years that generated a lot of publicity:
From 2011: [1]
> As a proof of concept, [Charlie Miller] created an application called Instastock that was approved by Apple's App Store. He then informed Apple about the security hole, who promptly expelled him from the App Store.
From 2015: [2]
> XcodeGhost exploits Xcode’s default search paths for system frameworks, and has successfully infected multiple iOS apps created by infected developers. At least two iOS apps were submitted to App Store, successfully passed Apple’s code review, and were published for public download.
From 2025: [3]
> We found Android and iOS apps, some available in Google Play and the App Store, which were embedded with a malicious SDK/framework for stealing recovery phrases for crypto wallets. The infected apps in Google Play had been downloaded more than 242,000 times.
And even if the apps aren't malicious, that doesn't mean you're secure. If the idea is that you feel safe using random app store apps because the apps are neatly sandboxed from the system, well, first of all, that part can be accomplished without an app store or a 30% tax. Second of all though, a lot of people's important information lives inside of the apps anyways. Why compromise the phone to access the data when you can compromise the apps themselves? Consider this from 2017:[4]
> During the testing process, I was able to confirm 76 popular iOS applications allow a silent man-in-the-middle attack to be performed on connections which should be protected by TLS (HTTPS), allowing interception and/or manipulation of data in motion.
Obviously Android has more malware than iOS, but if the idea is that even an idiot can use an iPhone and not have to care about good security practice and just run completely random apps, I firmly believe that's a horrible idea. It definitely reduces risks for the average person, but in practice they definitely should be employing good security practices either way because the app store and all of the sandboxing in the world can not save them from themselves. For power users, it basically doesn't do anything meaningful to the security practices calculus and you may possibly be better off with CalyxOS or GrapheneOS depending on what threats you are most concerned about.
My point, of course, is not to say that Apple iPhone is particularly unsafe, just that these anti-malware measures are very far from foolproof, definitely not something you should trust your Bitcoins with. They do probably screen a lot of obvious attempts at malware, but a lot of subtle attempts definitely find their way in. They don't really at all stop the store from being flooded with shitware that does things that would probably harm the privacy of the average user, like apps for "file format conversion" that silently upload your data to the cloud and have dubious privacy policies, or apps that try to convince you to accidentally subscribe to some expensive subscription. This is the kind of thing the Google Play Store was definitely known for, yet it's actually also completely all over the Apple App Store right now. Apple doesn't really seem to mind too much, they're more concerned about periodically harassing people like the developer of iSH.
What Apple and Google both do have a tendency to do is tie their dystopian anti-consumer garbage in with their security features even when they don't actually have to, for reasons that I don't think anyone needs explained to them.
Personally I think the sky will not fall if iOS allowed people to choose to be able to sideload applications. The fact that this would cause a tension whereby Apple would have some pressure to change App Store policies in order to continue getting a cut of sales and have better ability to mitigate unwanted software is kind of a feature and not a bug. As it is today, Apple has basically no incentives to ever consider changing its policies in any way that wouldn't be beneficial to them somehow.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Miller_(security_resea...
[2]: https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/novel-malware-xcodeghost...
[3]: https://securelist.com/sparkcat-stealer-in-app-store-and-goo...
[4]: https://medium.com/@chronic_9612/76-popular-apps-confirmed-v...
People argue you have Website too. But Website does not provide the same level of experience and is at disadvantage compared to Apps.
I have long argued Apple should have given up this power since 2013 / 2014. And Apple should split Games to Game Store, that keeps their 30% cut and would have kept at least 70 - 80% of their current App Store revenue.
For what ever reason last time I said this in 2018 and 2020 I was devoted to oblivion on HN.
Apple and Google can’t both be monopolists of the smartphone market (or even app stores). By definition, if there’s more than one seller, there is no monopoly.
I suppose you could say Apple is the monopolist if the iPhone market or the iPhone App Store market. You can’t say Google is the monopolist of the Android phone market or the Android App Store market.
But neither one, and certainly not both, can be the monopolist of the smartphone market or the smartphone app store market.
https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/apple-development/
Good to see VCs and Y Combinator now supporting and pushing for change.
Of course, Apple gets a 30% cut in any scams, so they have absolutely no incentive to do anything about it, and really their policies are what create it, in the first place.
It absolutely is, the only argument is about to what degree.
It feels like a social issue.
The other day I transferred pictures from my android phone to my Windows desktop, and some of them required a codec to open. I followed prompts, which landed me on a page in Windows store asking for $0.99 in exchange for the said codec.
We had a good Internet in the 90s and 00s. Apple had to ruin that.
> Swift’s string implementation goes to heroic efforts to be as Unicode-correct as possible. […] This is great for correctness, but it comes at a price, mostly in terms of unfamiliarity; if you’re used to manipulating strings with integer indices in other languages, Swift’s design will seem unwieldy at first, leaving you wondering.
> It’s not that other languages don’t have Unicode-correct APIs at all — most do. For instance, NSString has the enumerateSubstrings method that can be used to walk through a string by grapheme clusters. But defaults matter; Swift’s priority is to do the correct thing by default.
> Strings in Swift are very different than their counterparts in almost all other mainstream programming languages. When you’re used to strings effectively being arrays of code units, it’ll take a while to switch your mindset to Swift’s approach of prioritizing Unicode correctness over simplicity.
> Ultimately, we think Swift makes the right choice. Unicode text is much more complicated than what those other languages pretend it is. In the long run, the time savings from avoided bugs you’d otherwise have written will probably outweigh the time it takes to unlearn integer indexing.
— https://oleb.net/blog/2017/11/swift-4-strings/
I’d encourage you to read that entire article before describing strings as simple.
I was on such a project where we cared a lot about these details, and the whole team agreed to throw Swift strings out the window and build our own array-based string replacement where each slot is a symbol. Which is probably what Apple would've done if it weren't for performance overhead.
Didn't help that their API was really unstable. Every major Swift version broke our code in so many places that we started adding extra layers just to protect ourselves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp_questions/comments/10pvfia/look...
This brought up a fun thought exercise for me. Pretty sure that Y Combinator would argue that giving away 7% of one's company for access to intangible (but beneficial) things like funding, advisors, etc, is completely worth it for a company. Pretty sure that they also fund companies that pay salespeople fairly significant commissions on sales.
Interesting to see them argue that asking a company to give up 30% "commission" on revenue for access to a large market stifles competition and innovation.
Is Y Combinator's forcing companies to give up 7% of their companies for access to advisors and funding stifling innovation and competition? (Spoiler: I don't think so. I think both Y Combinator and apple should be able to capitalize on the access they provide.)
These two examples aren't the same, even just on the basis of market power.
Investors don't want large percentages of pre-profit money being siphoned off by Apple.
Generally speaking, an optimized win-win fee would be some percentage of profits, not revenue.
That might be far too difficult to manage, accounting wise. But we can safely say that 30% of revenue, would translate to an extreme percentage of profit. Apple is extorting from many companies.
One sign of anticompetitive behavior is when a company is leveraging things in their favor so hard, it seems quite plausible that they are actually harming themselves. Killing of developers, by charging massive fees even to money losing developers, is not a good long term strategy.
But the power to extract money even from those it causes real pain, is hard to turn down when quarterly numbers keep coming up.
In Apple. fashion, they are still pushing back on this despite the court ruling. It only shows more so why Apple needs to be made to open up.
What? They can offer an SPA, or a traditional web page. They can offer a hardware device. They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
As someone who worked at a company that tried to do this, years ago, that's hilariously laughable, and either you're just incredibly unaware of what that sort of thing takes, or you're arguing in bad faith.
And if you think SPAs or regular websites on mobile Safari can give you the same experience and hardware access as a native app, I'm not sure what to tell you.
> They can make an android app compelling enough to convert users.
Sure, right, now you're just spouting fantasy stories. (And I say this as an Android user.)
So different in fact that the comparison doesn't hold water.
When an app store takes a 30% commission on sales, every dollar the company earns afterwards increases their bank account by $0.70.
The percent doesn't really matter (if YC took 30% ownership or app stores took 7% commission), the comparison doesn't really make sense either way.
They don't behave the same way so to make the comparison didn't make any sense.
Note: Edited this a few times because words are hard.
30% of revenue cuts off the flow of money immediately even long before the company is profitable.
On the other hand you trust your bank, for example, so you follow the link on their website and install the App, and the trust came from their own brand.
Of course, I'd also assume most or all the people associated with YC were part of the "fire Lina Khan because our whole business model is actually just taking advantage of FAANG acquihire panic" squad, making them hypocrites (in a slightly different way) for helping to prop up these monopolistic gatekeepers and then acting put upon by the results of that.
Capitalizing, to the detriment of your competition (other paid software services) when you have a monopoly or duopoly on app distribution isn't legal.
Meanwhile, any subscription I sign up for through another channel, I have to wade through a sea of dark patterns to reach a cancel screen.
This is why I choose to have an iPhone, because the garden is walled and I can relax. If you want freedom to have multiple different app stores, Android is a better option for you.
Folks who care about having any app they want through alternative stores I wish would just opt for Android systems.
This applies in reverse, of course. The existence of the Apple store makes certain apps only available for the Apple store (iOS only), so therefore us Android users need to have it banned so we can continue to have choice.
Because it's better for them and they have that right. If YOU need a safe walled garden, shouldn't YOU be the one who supports the process and incentives for developers?
But the Injunction requires Apple not to prohibit linking-out period,
full stop. It does not permit Apple to condition the right to
link-out on the payment of a fee.
Similarly, the simplicity of the alternative world of just clicking a button fails to incorporate any additional risks (hence the "scare" screen).
Courts generally permit companies to charge what they want. It may be justifiable to force alternative markets for something close to a monopoly, but it's not clear they can force the alternative to be cheaper.
If you look at the table of authorities, it's basically Epic itself, and some 50+ year-old cases. There's just nothing really in support.
Currently, a tiny, tiny percentage of very large developers make virtually all of the profits from selling Apple apps. Apple's 30% rate has been in place longer than most of them have existed, so there's been no surprise. Price discrimination is legal, and Apple's choice to make larger companies pay more seems supportive of small businesses. So there's not even a compelling argument that Apple's fees are evil; it's just that big, maximalist players see a way to get more profit.
So yes, Apple fees limit profits for Y-combinator startups. The brief would have been more compelling had it listed the startups that were passed on due to the fees (rather than listing the successful ones). That's the only new data point in this argument, and would have been direct evidence of impact to small companies. But because the brief didn't make this argument factually, the court can fairly assume there are no such cases, and the brief may have done more damage than good to its cause.
And a lot of things just aren't available on mobile because of the cut. Most apps which offer movies or books for sale for instance only let you view them on the phone, you have to buy on the web.
The other major players in the App Store haven’t allowed in app purchases for years.
It's not about "having less profit" necessarily, it's about it being a more risky business with a lower potential ceiling making investment less likely and thus: a dearth of Apps.
(reading charitably, of course).
People struggle with this: Stripe and Apple do the same thing wrt to the fees. They get all into a knot trying to explain how 3% of all revenue, successfully capped at 0.3% in Europe, is somehow different than Apple taking 30% of App Store IAP. We already live in the world where nice, red headed LISP brothers and insightful patio furniture guy is wrong. You don’t even need to talk about it or file a brief.
The reason the Epic case is tough is because the fee doesn’t matter. Like what is the right fee? Say a number. Clearly it doesn’t make sense to take a fee at all! Apple is doing something valuable - they are concentrating wealthy, good customers who overwhelming choose iPhones instead of Android phones - and instead of making iPhones more expensive they take from app developers. But if you did the sensible thing - force the platforms to charge the cut they are taking from the end user up front, when they buy the phone - nobody is going to do that.
It’s exactly the same problem as Europe saying Facebook has to be ads free. Nobody chose to pay for a Facebook subscription. The truth is the regulators are in between a rock and a hard place if they try to make changes to one number in the midst of the status quo. In the past, regulators took more drastic steps, they split up the monopolies, and once you understand how weak these regulations that people are litigating are, suddenly you will be much more sympathetic to the idea that the App Store and the iPhone have to be different businesses, or that private digital payments companies shouldn’t exist at all.
If there anyone could make an App Store, then we would have a better idea of what the market rate for app stores should be.
The things is, there's really not.
There's two: Visa and Mastercard.
In the US there's also American Express and Discover (afaik), but those aren't accepted everywhere (to the point that it was a joke in Futurama).
But We’ve actually seen this happen in the United States before. The Durbin Amendment put a cap on debit card transactions of 21 cents plus 0.05% (although an additional 1¢ can be added to the cap if certain security requirements are met). After this Amendment was put into practice we saw two things:
1) Rewards earning debit cards were almost entirely phased out.
2) Prices did not drop as a result.
The reason the EU even capped payment processing fee's was because of this duopoly that was strangling the market. Quite poignant.
And it's 0.2% on debit cards. :)
Roughly speaking, when a transaction needs to be unwound, if the merchant cannot cover the reversal (for example, because it has defaulted), then the payment processor needs to pony up instead. Note that this isn't an edge case, this is something that happens every day.
If the payment processor defaults (gasp!), then the processor's sponsor bank needs to cover it. This is why a sponsor bank will have a lot to say about what a processor can and cannot do.
If the sponsor bank is unable to meet its obligations (argh!), then it's the card Network itself that is on the hook. This is why card networks have a lot to say about what a sponsor bank can and cannot do ;)
The key to understanding payment processing is to realise that the risk is very asymmetrical. The processing party collects only a small fraction of the transaction amount as fees, but is effectively on the hook for the full amount if things go pear shaped.
That is why the cost is typically proportional to the value of the payment.
You'll see fixed/capped fees mostly on payment methods that don't allow reversals (ie: not very consumer friendly), or that take place between highly trusted parties where credit risk can be handled through other ways.
This could be good, if it encourages people to re-learn the value of open standards, like Web is supposed to be, rather than helping to perpetuate the proprietary app stores.
Also, I think it's noteworthy that, once a company gets customers locked into a proprietary app store, they show their true extremely greedy, abusive, and indifferent side to third-party developers. No matter how warm and fuzzy a brand they craft for consumers.
Are Bay Area libertarian techbros ironically going to try to rely on government regulation to keep the awful proprietary app stores tolerable, or will they rediscover what industry has known for decades about the value of open standards, and direct their efforts consistent with that?
Though I'm sure then Apple would lock a lot of device access by websites behind a domain allowlist that you have to pay a bunch of money to get on.
Our current governments love monopolies, though. Easier to control.