And you believe Facebook gain nothing from this? I know content providers have their own apps in Appstore, some are free and some are subscribe based. Are you saying that 'these content providers' are looking for a loophole to sell their services to iOS users for free?
Sigh . Let me answer your question with a question. Why are you so determined to blame this on Facebook instead of the providers? What did Facebook do to become Apple's enemy in your book before now?
Now to get back at your question directly. Facebook has never had an issue with the App Store policies before. So why would they now? The answer. They don't. Facebook is like Google. They don't need App Store revenue. In fact they don't want it. Do you know why? Ads. Facebook makes far more on ads than they ever would from people buying subscriptions through the App Store. Now look. Open your mind here and realize that there are other business models than Apple's. Like the business model that allowed Google to surpass Yahoo and Microsoft and become the world's second biggest company by giving away Chrome, Android, the GSuite software and nearly all their other products and services for free.
Now please be willing to actually understand instead of doing the fanboy "I am closing my mind now because this information flies in the face of what I choose to believe about my favorite company" thing on purpose. Facebook doesn't want to use the subscription model for any of their services because they make less money that way. They can't make money by restricting themselves to 25% of the market and making a premium on hardware sales to that 25%. They make money off ads, and the way to make money off ads is to have as many users as possible engaging with their product as much as possible. The subscription model flies in the face of that because if they adopt that they will lose 50% to 75% of their customers off the bat. They don't want to write off those customers as "cheap", "uneducated", "unsophisticated", "moochers", "leeches", "no taste", "don't understand tech" etc. (The way that Apple fans view Android and Microsoft consumers.) They can make revenue off showing ads to those people too because their business model is volume not margin. To use a broadcast analogy, Google and Facebook are network TV where Apple is premium cable. Or Facebook is broadcast radio where Apple is satellite radio.
That is why the only consumer services that Google charges for are YouTube Red, Google Play Movies/TV/Books/Music and cloud storage. Now the latter has real infrastructure costs and if Google gave away unlimited cloud storage for free you would have 1 billion people uploading 5 TB of data just because. But the former? The content providers own the content and they want to be paid for it.
The same is going on here. Hearst, Tronc, and the Washington Post are the ones who want - and need - this revenue. Facebook doesn't, and trust me if they could work out a way where they could provide this service for free they would. Yes, Facebook benefits. Why? Because right now Facebook serves up links and when you clink on a link you leave Facebook and go to the newspaper's site. This allows you to subscribe to the newspaper within the app, read the news content while staying in the app and still seeing Facebook ads. The paper gets the subscription revenue, Facebook gets the ad revenue and both win. But if there was some way for Facebook to get the ad revenue without the subscription component that is what they would do because that is what they do for every single other app that they have in the App Store. It would maximize the number of people who read the news content while staying in their app and in the process see their ads. Instead, 50%-75% fewer people will use this app than otherwise would. Facebook isn't happy with this, but they have no choice but to go along, because that way it makes the content providers their partners instead of their competitors and Facebook wants to keep their partnerships with the content providers in a way that maximizes the time that people stay on Facebook.
But hey, you go ahead and blame Facebook for this because you choose to believe that every other company is an enemy of Apple out to take away Apple's hard earned money.
TR; GB
Too Ranty; Got Bored
But given your posting history, we can guess the gist.
Whether Facebook chooses to charge publishers or not is down to Facebook. But if they are selling a subscription they pay 30%. That’s the rule. They pay up and they’re free to sell your reading history to the same publishers with a clear conscience, which is how they make their money back. It’s a very clever scheme no I think about it.
But hey, go ahead and align yourself with anybody who’ll make you feel better about your obsessive hatred of Apple.
Owning a app development company my position towards to the 30% cut is very ambiguous. When I launched my first app in 2012, I did not have a problem at all for paying Apple or Google a 30% cut as long as they brought me customers (and they did). But now we are living in 2017 and the situation has changed.
A recent survey with my customers showed that none of the about 350 customers that answered the survey discovered my app by searching it on the app store. Given the big number of apps on the App store, I have now to carry the whole marketing cost myself. Which means that Apple (and Google) is no longer a sales channel but has shrunk to a compulsary hosting provider. Bear in mind that unlike the Mac development ecosystem, the iOS App store is imposed on the developer.
Operating some cloud services myself, I have a pretty good idea about the cost structure of hosting service. It reminds me of Qualcomm who charges a license as a fixed ratio on the
end user selling price of the phone. Most of us consider this as
unfair. Apple is charging a 30% cut for a service with a fixed and albeit low cost. So my feeling about the 30% cut for an imposed hosting service is the same as with Qualcomm licenses: it is unfair.
Nevertheless I am grateful to Apple for creating an app ecosystem. Only Apple should not be so greedy towards the app developers. Most of them are facing big issues making a profit.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Facebook. They are abusing the innocent customer. But it is not because I don't like Facebook, that Facebook cannot have a vaild point about the 30% cut.
Comments
Too Ranty; Got Bored
But given your posting history, we can guess the gist.
Whether Facebook chooses to charge publishers or not is down to Facebook. But if they are selling a subscription they pay 30%. That’s the rule. They pay up and they’re free to sell your reading history to the same publishers with a clear conscience, which is how they make their money back. It’s a very clever scheme no I think about it.
But hey, go ahead and align yourself with anybody who’ll make you feel better about your obsessive hatred of Apple.
A recent survey with my customers showed that none of the about 350 customers that answered the survey discovered my app by searching it on the app store. Given the big number of apps on the App store, I have now to carry the whole marketing cost myself. Which means that Apple (and Google) is no longer a sales channel but has shrunk to a compulsary hosting provider. Bear in mind that unlike the Mac development ecosystem, the iOS App store is imposed on the developer.
Operating some cloud services myself, I have a pretty good idea about the cost structure of hosting service. It reminds me of Qualcomm who charges a license as a fixed ratio on the end user selling price of the phone. Most of us consider this as unfair. Apple is charging a 30% cut for a service with a fixed and albeit low cost. So my feeling about the 30% cut for an imposed hosting service is the same as with Qualcomm licenses: it is unfair.
Nevertheless I am grateful to Apple for creating an app ecosystem. Only Apple should not be so greedy towards the app developers. Most of them are facing big issues making a profit.
I have absolutely no sympathy for Facebook. They are abusing the innocent customer. But it is not because I don't like Facebook, that Facebook cannot have a vaild point about the 30% cut.
... He has to pay for all of his other propaganda sites - why not FaceBook?