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Apple Announces App Store Small Business Program

(www.apple.com)
830 points todsacerdoti | 4 comments | 18 Nov 20 11:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pja ◴[18 Nov 20 12:43 UTC] No.25136113[source]▶
I’m seeing a lot of positive comments on HN about this: to me it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part.

They hope to significantly reduce the pressure on politicians to take a close look at their App store practices by significantly reducing the absolute number of developers suffering the full impact whilst taking the minimum possible hit to their revenue. This has nothing to do with “doing the right thing” or “accelerating innovation” and everything to do with limiting the number of outraged letters to senators from devs, the number of newspaper interviews with prominent indie developers & so on.

Indie devs have an outsize PR impact relative to their revenue contribution, so buy them off with a smaller revenue tax that delivers outsize returns if it prevents the 30% house rake on the majority of Apple’s App Store income coming under scrutiny.

Apple / Google’s 30% take is the anti-competitive elephant in the room here, not a few crumbs thrown to small developers.

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NovemberWhiskey ◴[18 Nov 20 13:02 UTC] No.25136254[source]▶
>to it seems to be purely a cynical piece of PR on Apple’s part.

Oh please.

Has it ever occurred in the history of the world that the selfish motives of two different parties aligned? i.e. Apple gets good press for helping smaller developers and the smaller developers get increased revenues. It happens all the times, and it's called "good business".

You can keep waiting for Apple's App Store executives to cover themselves with sackcloth and ashes and repent of their terrible policies. Let me know how that works out.

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1. fbelzile ◴[18 Nov 20 15:02 UTC] No.25137489[source]▶
I agree that this is good news. But let's keep "selfish motives of two different parties" in perspective to the size and power of one side over the other.

This program came in after more than decade after the app store was created and when Apple is finally under increased public scrutiny for anti-competitive behaviour. Apple made an estimated $20 billion from the app store last year alone with estimated profits from that revenue being around 90% [1]. Being able to afford to half the commission over night speaks to how disconnected the commission is to the costs in running the store.

Why were they able to take 30% and continue to take 15% commission off of all sales? Because the value of the app store is only created via continued practices of anti-competitive behaviour. Ex:

1) Banning competing app stores (restricting customers choice)

2) Banning the mention of alternate methods of payment (restricted customers harmed by paying higher fees)

The argument that the app store charged "market rate" is also not a fair comparison. Your comparing one completely closed market to other open markets that Microsoft and Google produced. Both main competitors allow for competing app stores from their own for example.

[1] https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/10/the-app-store-is-s...

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2. samatman ◴[18 Nov 20 20:17 UTC] No.25141883[source]▶
> Why were they able to take 30% and continue to take 15% commission off of all sales? Because the value of the app store is only created via continued practices of anti-competitive behaviour.

Also, because Apple created the most valuable mobile software market in the world, by creating the iPhone, continuing to release top-notch phones year after year, and by creating the App Store itself.

It remains true that iPhone users buy software at a rate that totally dwarfs Android. This could be traced to a number of reasons, but I wouldn't dismiss the App Store monopoly as one of them.

You can describe this as anti-competitive, just keep in mind that you're assuming your own conclusion. You could make the same argument for Apple's refusal to license their OSes for hardware they don't manufacture, I would be similarly unimpressed.

As a user, I would like a stress-free way to sideload apps which don't meet Apple's standards for inclusion on the App Store. Don't see why Apple would want to give away their competitive advantage by letting other stores sell software for their phones, but I could imagine them making side-loading less onerous, that would be nice.

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3. fbelzile ◴[18 Nov 20 22:21 UTC] No.25143273[source]▶
> Also, because Apple created the most valuable mobile software market in the world,

No, they created the possibility for the most valuable mobile software market in the world. Third-party developers were the ones that created it into the most valuable mobile software market in the world.

> by creating the iPhone

Creating the iPhone does not explain the source of the App Store's value, only that one is "tied" to the other. Which leads to my next point.

> You can describe this as anti-competitive, just keep in mind that you're assuming your own conclusion.

It's anti-competitive according to the law. The practice of selling a service (ie: commissions from App Store) as a mandatory addition to the purchase of a different product (ie: iPhone) is called tying. In the United States, most states have laws against tying, which are enforced by state governments. In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice enforces federal laws against tying through its Antitrust Division [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

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4. samatman ◴[19 Nov 20 04:05 UTC] No.25146114{3}[source]▶
> No, they created the possibility for the most valuable mobile software market in the world. Third-party developers were the ones that created it into the most valuable mobile software market in the world.

No, they literally created the market. The products sold in my supermarket don't create the supermarket either.

Whether what Apple does meets the legal definition of tying is an open question. I doubt it, clearly you're convinced, which is to say, you're assuming your own conclusion.