If I go to the App Store on my phone, and go to my "Purchased" list, Fortnite is still listed there. I wasn't up to date, and clicking on "update" gives the message:
"Fortnite" No Longer Available. The developer has removed this app from the App Store.
Interesting wording. I wonder if they only have one message for pulled-by-Apple vs pulled-by-dev?
Monopolies lead to stagnation, rising prices, and inferior product quality. Even though Apple is not a monopoly in the strict sense, I think we consumers will benefit from alternative app store - or Apple opening up the platform.
I believe one can still have (moderately) secure ecosystem without it being a walled garden.
If you have an iPhone the Appstore is unquestionably a monopoly. At least Google can make the case you can install other app stores so the monopoly claim is weaker.
Smartphones are not stand alone widgets. They are portals into vast troves of software made by legions of developers. Right now, at least for Apple, their app store is the lone chokepoint between this software and the world. Them taking 30% of every sale between the developers and their users deserves scrutiny. This percentage is not based on the market because there is no market. There is one option. There lies the monopoly.
To spell this out further: There is competition in the smartphone market... but the app store has an artificial monopoly on iOS software distribution which is a separate market serving more than 100 million people.
Hell, from my perspective the app store is part of the competition. I buy i-devices over Android for a few reasons but high on the list is the set of restrictions Apple places on developers, including their payment restrictions. Those aren't harming me, they're giving me one OS where ~ none of my mind ever has to be dedicated to considering a bunch of stuff that it does on other platforms. One platform safe for less-computer-savvy relatives, that also still lets them do basically anything they might want to do and operate independently. That is choice, the fact that I can choose that.
> The mere mention of Google, a perfectly suitable competitor,
A perfectly suitable competitor ... which has exactly the same fees, similar policies and do not seem to have any pressure due to the competition to change them, yeah something does not sound right here.
Alternatively I could compare the number of companies I could use to host my web app (100k+) to the number of companies I could use to host my mobile app (just 2). The lack of competition when you compare that to an healthy market is obvious.
Many industries converge on similar pricing, and that doesn’t make it anti competitive. It may be anti competitive here, but that also may just be the natural price the market is willing to bear.
Google doesn’t make any iOS phones though. You can make it look like there are never monopolies if you choose to only look at certain markets while ignoring others.
You’re doing just that: you’re making everything look like a monopoly by focusing on a single product. Yes, Apple has a “monopoly” on iPhones the same way that Nike has a monopoly on Air Jordans. It’s not a monopoly.
Nobody has really “had their game shut off”. People who have Fortnite installed already are still able to play it indefinitely. Apple could have done this by revoking Epic’s developer certificate, but that hasn’t yet happened.
Epic effectively pulled it themselves when they unilaterally broke their agreement.
I think Apple's cut is egregious but at the same time, they're not a monopoly. My main gripe is that they're behaving as if they're bringing value that the developers are riding on, when in reality nobody would buy iPhones if it weren't for the value that many developers are bringing to the platform, often at no cost to Apple.
Apple has 49-65% of the phone+tablet market in the USA. People keep forgetting it's irrelevant if Android is more popular the world over. Countries only bring anti-monopoly decisions based on their country's market, not the world market.
Further, the market for "smartphones" is not Apple vs Google. It's Apple vs Samsung vs Motorola vs LG vs Sony. Those are smartphone makers. At the 50%+ marketshare, Apple has more than double the market share of it's next biggest competitor.
Further, as pointed out elsewhere you don't have to have a monopoly for being sued for anti-competitive behavior.
> Further, as pointed out elsewhere you don't have to have a monopoly for being sued for anti-competitive behavior.
Conversely, you can have a monopoly and commit abuses and get away with it in the pro-business United States. Microsoft is noticeably intact, despite what we may have wanted to happen in the late 90s.
At this point it’s always important to remember that the DoJ lawsuit against Microsoft was largely about them abusing their market power by including a pre-installed web browser.
In this case, the market came together to produce a solution much better for society than the state could have concocted, or predicted: high quality open source software. We can all be thankful that Netscape’s market for $40 web browsers (actually buggy groupware by that point) wasn’t protected for any longer than it should have been, because the pressure of Microsoft’s dominance drove the market towards demanding more symmetrical rights via entirely new approaches of software development and distribution across desktop applications, server and embedded operating systems and software, and web-based platform-agnostic applications.
> My main gripe is that they're behaving as if they're bringing value that the developers are riding on, when in reality nobody would buy iPhones if it weren't for the value that many developers are bringing to the platform, often at no cost to Apple.
Counterpoint: the consistency, convenience, and safety of the App Store and broader iOS platform is part of why so much money is spent there.
[EDIT] but yes I think their cut should be lower. They are definitely delivering a ton of value to developers, though, and part of that is created precisely by some of the restrictions that developers love to complain about.
> Counterpoint: the consistency, convenience, and safety of the App Store and broader iOS platform is part of why so much money is spent there.
This is a really interesting point. Whether this is the reason or not for me, but I make and sell apps on both platforms and the identical app, identical price sells 4 or 5 to 1 on iOS vs. Android.
The times I've seen numbers on this from the business side, from biz-intel sorts of places (think, Gartner), the figures are crazy-unbalanced in favor of Apple. Way more spending per device (not tens of % more, but an integer multiple more), larger fraction of time spent in apps (as opposed to the browser, or basic phone use like texting or calls), and on top of that way more time using the device period. My guess: some of that's demographics, some of it's how pleasant/usable the OS and device are, some of it's how consistent and safe-feeling the spending-money experience is.
Who else is apple competing with to put apps on iphones? Compared to android where you have indy devs, samsung store, play store, or any other store; it's a clear monopoly.
There isn't an iPhone industry, there's a smartphone industry, and Apple (despite all their profits) only controls a small portion of that business.
Their strategy also adds a lot of consumer value. I use an iPhone specifically because I understand the tradeoffs between freedom and reliability/security, and I go for the reliability/security. Not everyone wants a second job playing sysadmin on their smartphone.
Of course there is. You can argue that it shouldn't be the deciding factor here, but you can't argue it doesn't exist at all.
iOS is basically a geographical region. It's like saying there isn't a California market because it's instead the US market. Or that you can't be considered a monopoly because people can move. Yes, they can, but there's significant burdens to that movement. And it turns out that burden was enough to consider things like utilities to be monopolies. Is the burden on switching between Android & iOS high enough to be considered a barrier to free competition? I'd say yes, it is. As such, iOS is its own market in which Apple is abusing monopoly position.
I can get 3rd party parts for my Ford without issue, and it can be worked on & upgraded by 3rd party shops. There's competition even within the subset of cars from Ford.
That's not the point though. Apple wants 30% regardless of what service you offer. While it's understandable (to a degree) for the app itself, it's not for something you purchase in the app.
Fortnite money has nothing to do with Apple. If they would only charge the processing fee and whatnot there would be no debate. Compare it to paying Apple for subscribing to Netflix/Spotify/Amazon. What is their accomplishment in this case?
I completely agree that Apple's treatment of developers is terrible, and that Apple should be shining their shoes and thanking them for selling Apple's products for them. At the same time I'm happy that Apple is being strict when developers try to skirt the rules, as I appreciate the rigorously-maintained platform. I seriously appreciate the no-BS treatment of subscriptions, because so many services make unsubscribing a complete nightmare. Whenever there's an option, I will take the App Store subscription over anything else.
If it were up to me, Apple would charge more like 3% and keep all other factors the same in terms of strictly shutting down developers who try to skirt the policies.
Would you care if apps could offer two subscription methods, the Apple one with no-BS and the developers' one with a lower price (but potentially shittier experience)?
It's a genuine question, as you thinking about the app store consumer experience.
Personally I like the choice. Pay with cash and get X% off, or use a credit card :)
Not only that, they have the majority of app store purchases.
And there is also the fact that the government doesn't classify a trust[1] by the dictionary definition of monopoly:
> Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.
I'd think a more "fair" comparison would be "percent of dollars spent". Since Apple is purposely targeting a higher cost, lower volume segment of the market.
It's a fairly difficult comparison to make though because you have to compare a single companies vertical integration to the non-integrated supply chains of several other companies.
Also, the consumer experience of a single well-maintained, and mostly safe App Store plays a large role in why iPhone users are comfortable spending more money on third party apps.
Anytime the discussion around Apple’s take on subscription revenue comes up there are always comments from people that they wouldn’t even mind paying a premium price just to have the convenience of having all their subscriptions managed in one place, and free of company-specific dark patterns for unsubscribing.
The smartphone industry is a duopoly between iOS and Android, however iOS accounts for a majority of app spending. Their actions are overwhelmingly impactful to developers. If you want to maximize your profits as a developer you design for iOS first.
I think if apple rejects an update, the older version still exists. I could be wrong. What epic would have done after getting rejected for the latest update is pull the whole app. Then the message that appeared is correct. Apple didn't remove the older version of the app but epic
