In other news, France today has decided to create a new open-source platform based on BSD and UNIX called 'iFrance', where any and all commercial interests relevant to the country must be vetted for compliance to French law, effectively creating a walled garden for its economy. The Verge was noted as being the first blog to erupt in umbrage, yet the Germans have already trademarked 'iDeutsche'. More details at 11!
Owning an app developing company I do understand the argument of France. ...
Since 2016 all my new apps are free to download. They use data that is stored on a paying cloud service where I have full control. Very similar to the web based client I developed for PC and Mac. In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking. I do have to provide my own paying service, which I did anyhow for the web based clients and which costs about 2.5% iso. 30% Apple and Google are charging. But this scheme is only possible for cloud based services where the real value is in the cloud data.
This may work fine and dandy for you and some portion of your buyers, but for me personally, I don't care what you're selling, the model that you're using raises a huge "Do Not Buy" flag. I will not buy or subscribe to anything outside the app store, period. That would mean giving customer information, name, credit/debit card, etc., to a third party, and it means trusting that they know how to protect it safely, not sell/share/trade/rent to other companies, etc., and that's just not the reality of the world in 2018. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time researching each and every app maker, and their entire payment and customer data chain every time I want to buy an app or a game or whatever. You have no further to look than the magazine industry, which fought tooth and nail with Apple because they wanted all the detailed customer information and Apple said "Nope". Given the choice, most customers do not want this, and Apple took a lot of heat for protecting their users.
This is in addition to all the valid points that others have made above about other costs that you're conveniently "forgetting" about, such as hosting, bandwidth, product visibility/marketing, etc. Sure, they may very well add up to less than 30%, but for sure you're losing potential customers that don't want to deal with 3rd party payment/subscription systems. That's a harder one to work into your cost/benefit equation, because you almost certainly don't know what those numbers are.
So fed up with these guys they can have their wine and crepes what a bunch of lazy leeches. Americans need to refuse flying those bag of bolts Airbuses and demand Boeings only. We need to sick our new President on them and tax the hell out of Frances imports.
If the French government cannot see some very significant differences between the way Apple and Google manage data and impose conditions, that tells me that this investigation is currently in the "we have a theory, let's see if its true" phase. There's certainly room for some improvement in the relationships, but the developers get 70 percent of the purchase and in-app price.
I'm not sure there's a provider/distributor relationship in the retail world that takes much less than that, and I'm further not sure if France understands how capitalism works vis-a-vis exploitation, but I'll await more details and in particular I'll be interested to hear any claims of actual law-breaking by either company.
Are you one of those companies, who develop their own services thinking they save money, leak customer data from time to time and get sued/fined and lose business because of the lack of trust. Sounds legit!
Are you one of these fanboys who assume that there is only one company in the world that can handle secure transactions in a professional way?
Owning an app developing company I do understand the argument of France. The complaint is that app developers for iOS and Android are forced to accept the rigid rules of these stores. If you develop for e.g. Mac you can choose to use the Mac app store or you can choose you own pricing policy and distribution channel.
The technical rules for an app development are not the issue: they ensure that the user experience is great. The commercial rules are a different story. As an app developer I cannot give discount during launch (to create a critical mass for my app), I cannot use coupons, I cannot do cross selling (you bought my first app, now you can a discount on my second), I cannot freely define prices, I have stupid currency restrictions ... These limitations can seriously impact the profitability of an app.
Off course there are ways to circumvent this. Since 2016 all my new apps are free to download. They use data that is stored on a paying cloud service where I have full control. Very similar to the web based client I developed for PC and Mac. In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking. I do have to provide my own paying service, which I did anyhow for the web based clients and which costs about 2.5% iso. 30% Apple and Google are charging. But this scheme is only possible for cloud based services where the real value is in the cloud data.
If France would go to Vestager, the famous European Commissioner in charge of competition, France might have a point. If the EU commission finds that a mobile app developer has no choice but to accept the commercial rules of the App Store and/or the Play Store, these commercial rules might be perceived as anti competitive behaviour. The fact that App Store and Play store have very similar commercial rules, might even be interpreted as forming a cartel, which is not allowed
So you’re getting advertising for your service for almost free being in the App Store, and still see the commercial rules as problematic? Oi vey!
Owning an app developing company I do understand the argument of France. The complaint is that app developers for iOS and Android are forced to accept the rigid rules of these stores. If you develop for e.g. Mac you can choose to use the Mac app store or you can choose you own pricing policy and distribution channel.
The technical rules for an app development are not the issue: they ensure that the user experience is great. The commercial rules are a different story. As an app developer I cannot give discount during launch (to create a critical mass for my app), I cannot use coupons, I cannot do cross selling (you bought my first app, now you can a discount on my second), I cannot freely define prices, I have stupid currency restrictions ... These limitations can seriously impact the profitability of an app.
Off course there are ways to circumvent this. Since 2016 all my new apps are free to download. They use data that is stored on a paying cloud service where I have full control. Very similar to the web based client I developed for PC and Mac. In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking. I do have to provide my own paying service, which I did anyhow for the web based clients and which costs about 2.5% iso. 30% Apple and Google are charging. But this scheme is only possible for cloud based services where the real value is in the cloud data.
If France would go to Vestager, the famous European Commissioner in charge of competition, France might have a point. If the EU commission finds that a mobile app developer has no choice but to accept the commercial rules of the App Store and/or the Play Store, these commercial rules might be perceived as anti competitive behaviour. The fact that App Store and Play store have very similar commercial rules, might even be interpreted as forming a cartel, which is not allowed
"In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking" Does the cloud service you use, incur costs or is it free? You do realize the reason you pay the price (at least, by following rules of Apple, if not by paying 30% cut) is because Apple gives you instant access to their customers (half a billion of them)? Otherwise you would be paying 50-70% of your revenue as commissions to distributors, to get anywhere near the numbers of customers Apple markets you to...and even then it won't be as convenient(aka TIME/COST).
What a weird combination of someone who works for himself and makes money doing that, and someone trying to argue that the rules you set up for the products/services should be restricted.... That is JUST a bit hypocritical and ironic, don't you think?
Imagine, someone uses the same logic in arguing that you should not be posting your app, as it creates unnecessary pressure on other developers (because they are less capable of developing good apps) . Going by what you have said, you should be supporting and opposing that at the same time. SMH
My professional cloud service (fully automated, duplicated with automatic fail over) serves all my apps and costs me about $2000 a year, which is very minimal. This gives you an indication that there is a mismatch between the story Apple is telling about the 30% cut and the costs involved.
I want to get rid of any
commercial restriction Apple and Google are imposing on the app
developers. Getting rid of these restrictions is not a restriction in itself, it is opening the market.
The access to the millions of iPhone customers is marketing talk from Apple, most of us just assume it must be very valuable, but it isn't for all apps. I did a survey among my customers and of the 650 replies I got, 0 (yes zero) knew about my apps because they found it in the app store, 70% got the app because of marketing actions I did and paid, 30% is mouth to mouth. So the app store is not bringing me a lot of value
I sell access to data, as such I only care about the ten thousands of people who want to pay for the access to the data. About 35% of my customers access my data via an iPhone app and most of them use multiple devices (tablets, PC, ...). I care about and follow my customers and whether they have an iPhone or not, is a just an implementation detail. I won't get more revenue if the number of iPhones doubled worldwide.
Owning an app developing company I do understand the argument of France. ...
Since 2016 all my new apps are free to download. They use data that is stored on a paying cloud service where I have full control. Very similar to the web based client I developed for PC and Mac. In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking. I do have to provide my own paying service, which I did anyhow for the web based clients and which costs about 2.5% iso. 30% Apple and Google are charging. But this scheme is only possible for cloud based services where the real value is in the cloud data.
This may work fine and dandy for you and some portion of your buyers, but for me personally, I don't care what you're selling, the model that you're using raises a huge "Do Not Buy" flag. I will not buy or subscribe to anything outside the app store, period. That would mean giving customer information, name, credit/debit card, etc., to a third party, and it means trusting that they know how to protect it safely, not sell/share/trade/rent to other companies, etc., and that's just not the reality of the world in 2018. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time researching each and every app maker, and their entire payment and customer data chain every time I want to buy an app or a game or whatever. You have no further to look than the magazine industry, which fought tooth and nail with Apple because they wanted all the detailed customer information and Apple said "Nope". Given the choice, most customers do not want this, and Apple took a lot of heat for protecting their users.
This is in addition to all the valid points that others have made above about other costs that you're conveniently "forgetting" about, such as hosting, bandwidth, product visibility/marketing, etc. Sure, they may very well add up to less than 30%, but for sure you're losing potential customers that don't want to deal with 3rd party payment/subscription systems. That's a harder one to work into your cost/benefit equation, because you almost certainly don't know what those numbers are.
First of all I don't get the credit card details. It is handled by a third party payment processor (Ingenico), who is certified by all a lot of banks banks world wide to handle the transactions securely. I find it amazing to see that of lot of Americans assume that any merchant in the world is allowed to collect credit cards details. in the EU there is since 1992 a directive that forbids this. The US are years behind in the area of secure payment infrastructure
Second my apps are GDPR compliant, meaning that there are strict privacy rules in place about the data and the user rights.
I just always figured that if I started something and wanted to put it on the largest stage in the world, no matter if that is in technology or art or theater, that I am going to have to pay a price for that kind of exposure. So yeah, start ups have to bend to Apple and Googles "will". If you don't like it, come up with a better model and beat those companies at their own game. It's been done many times before. Just the price of doing business.
You don't even need a better model.
If app developers of massively popular apps abandoned iOS it would do a lot of damage to iPhone sales. If WeChat weren't available on iOS, things would look bleak for Apple in China. Exactly the same thing happened on the Mac but for different reasons. When key Mac applications were ported to Windows, things got complicated for Apple. Then some of those applications saw the Windows versions getting new features first plus optimisation and eventually companies like Adobe even encouraged Mac users to switch. Now, the iPhone has been the revenue driver for Apple for a few years but it won't be that way forever.
I've said for years that one of the problems with walled gardens was 'choice'. I may be mistaken but I believe a case is already open in the EU for that aspect.
I'm not sure I understand the basis of this argument. Developers set their prices. Nobody is forcing developers to publish for either platform. Apple and Google have their own stores and they get to set the rules. Apple and Google should respond by banning French developers from participating in their stores. That seems like a fair response....
Agreed (except for banning French developers, as there's no need). I heard the French finance minister on NPR yesterday and he didn't make much sense. He repeated the notion that developers can't set their own prices, which is wrong. Then he sort of alluded to the fact that they can set their own prices, but that if Apple didn't like the price, they could take the app down, but has that ever happened?
I'm assuming that Apple takes the same 30% in France as they do in the U.S. About the only argument one could possibly make is that developers should be permitted to sell their apps outside of the app store because Apple has a monopoly on those apps. But let's say that Apple worked on a more traditional retail sales model where the developers/publishers sold their apps to Apple for a wholesale price. Based on what happens in regular retail, the developers would typically only get 50% or less, not 70%, so they'd be a lot worse off. And lets look at what the developers do get from Apple that they wouldn't get in a traditional model: absolutely free developer tools, documentation and training. Back in the day, that might have been worth $10,000 to $50,000.
If there's any complaint about the App Store it's that there's too many apps and it's hard to get noticed. But that's what happens when you have an open platform that anyone can participate in (even though critics claim this is a closed model). In a traditional retail model, retailers SELECT what they want to sell -- they don't sell everything. Is that what the French developers want? If that were the case, far fewer would have apps in the store.
Owning an app developing company I do understand the argument of France. ...
Since 2016 all my new apps are free to download. They use data that is stored on a paying cloud service where I have full control. Very similar to the web based client I developed for PC and Mac. In this way I even get rid of 30% cut Apple and Google are asking. I do have to provide my own paying service, which I did anyhow for the web based clients and which costs about 2.5% iso. 30% Apple and Google are charging. But this scheme is only possible for cloud based services where the real value is in the cloud data.
This may work fine and dandy for you and some portion of your buyers, but for me personally, I don't care what you're selling, the model that you're using raises a huge "Do Not Buy" flag. I will not buy or subscribe to anything outside the app store, period. That would mean giving customer information, name, credit/debit card, etc., to a third party, and it means trusting that they know how to protect it safely, not sell/share/trade/rent to other companies, etc., and that's just not the reality of the world in 2018. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time researching each and every app maker, and their entire payment and customer data chain every time I want to buy an app or a game or whatever. You have no further to look than the magazine industry, which fought tooth and nail with Apple because they wanted all the detailed customer information and Apple said "Nope". Given the choice, most customers do not want this, and Apple took a lot of heat for protecting their users.
This is in addition to all the valid points that others have made above about other costs that you're conveniently "forgetting" about, such as hosting, bandwidth, product visibility/marketing, etc. Sure, they may very well add up to less than 30%, but for sure you're losing potential customers that don't want to deal with 3rd party payment/subscription systems. That's a harder one to work into your cost/benefit equation, because you almost certainly don't know what those numbers are.
First of all I don't get the credit card details. It is handled by a third party payment processor (Ingenico), who is certified by all a lot of banks banks world wide to handle the transactions securely. I find it amazing to see that of lot of Americans assume that any merchant in the world is allowed to collect credit cards details. in the EU there is since 1992 a directive that forbids this. The US are years behind in the area of secure payment infrastructure
Second my apps are GDPR compliant, meaning that there are strict privacy rules in place about the data and the user rights.
I don't care that you don't get CC details, though that's always a good first step. Note that I said "third party", which means your CC processing chain. With one-time purchases it's sometimes possible to do with anonymous pre-paid cards, (or occasionally even with bitcoin), but with subscriptions it's typically not allowed, hence verifiable user data is indeed transferred to you and/or the processors.
Also, it's not just CC details, but as with the magazine industry, I don't want you and your processing chain to know who *I* am. The relationship between providers of data/services and users of data/services is a very slippery slope. Anonymity is important, and should be available in many, if not most cases, and yet it's very difficult to provide anymore. The world of tracking and surveillance has reached way beyond what most people can even comprehend anymore, and it's out of control. At the moment, the only way to avoid having unregulated behavioral profiles created and tweaked 24/7/365 is to pay attention to things like not having your purchases and internet usage monitored. Apple's App Store does allow for this, as you can create account solely with iTunes gift cards, and as long as you're careful about when/were you purchase (and use) apps, it can indeed be 100% anonymous.
As for GDPR-compliance, it's great that the EU is on a good path, but it's very difficult to know how much or how well this is ultimately going to protect customers overall. UK has one of the most pervasive systems of tracking citizens in the "free" world, and yeah, Brexit, but it's mostly a big We'll See for now.
And as for the US being "years behind" in the area of secure payment infrastructure, I generally agree, but ApplePay in particular is a very strong player, with what appears to be a very strong model. But the US isn't just "behind" when it comes to customer privacy, we're not even on the same path or trajectory. "Behind" would imply that we're on the same path of progress, just farther behind, when in reality, we don't even seem to be on the same path right now, and that's very troubling.
In other news, France today has decided to create a new open-source platform based on BSD and UNIX called 'iFrance', where any and all commercial interests relevant to the country must be vetted for compliance to French law, effectively creating a walled garden for its economy. The Verge was noted as being the first blog to erupt in umbrage, yet the Germans have already trademarked 'iDeutsche'. More details at 11!
Apple has decided to start working on its own project, called - AyeFrance!
Comments
This is in addition to all the valid points that others have made above about other costs that you're conveniently "forgetting" about, such as hosting, bandwidth, product visibility/marketing, etc. Sure, they may very well add up to less than 30%, but for sure you're losing potential customers that don't want to deal with 3rd party payment/subscription systems. That's a harder one to work into your cost/benefit equation, because you almost certainly don't know what those numbers are.
I'm not sure there's a provider/distributor relationship in the retail world that takes much less than that, and I'm further not sure if France understands how capitalism works vis-a-vis exploitation, but I'll await more details and in particular I'll be interested to hear any claims of actual law-breaking by either company.
If app developers of massively popular apps abandoned iOS it would do a lot of damage to iPhone sales. If WeChat weren't available on iOS, things would look bleak for Apple in China. Exactly the same thing happened on the Mac but for different reasons. When key Mac applications were ported to Windows, things got complicated for Apple. Then some of those applications saw the Windows versions getting new features first plus optimisation and eventually companies like Adobe even encouraged Mac users to switch. Now, the iPhone has been the revenue driver for Apple for a few years but it won't be that way forever.
I've said for years that one of the problems with walled gardens was 'choice'. I may be mistaken but I believe a case is already open in the EU for that aspect.
I'm assuming that Apple takes the same 30% in France as they do in the U.S. About the only argument one could possibly make is that developers should be permitted to sell their apps outside of the app store because Apple has a monopoly on those apps. But let's say that Apple worked on a more traditional retail sales model where the developers/publishers sold their apps to Apple for a wholesale price. Based on what happens in regular retail, the developers would typically only get 50% or less, not 70%, so they'd be a lot worse off. And lets look at what the developers do get from Apple that they wouldn't get in a traditional model: absolutely free developer tools, documentation and training. Back in the day, that might have been worth $10,000 to $50,000.
If there's any complaint about the App Store it's that there's too many apps and it's hard to get noticed. But that's what happens when you have an open platform that anyone can participate in (even though critics claim this is a closed model). In a traditional retail model, retailers SELECT what they want to sell -- they don't sell everything. Is that what the French developers want? If that were the case, far fewer would have apps in the store.
I don't care that you don't get CC details, though that's always a good first step. Note that I said "third party", which means your CC processing chain. With one-time purchases it's sometimes possible to do with anonymous pre-paid cards, (or occasionally even with bitcoin), but with subscriptions it's typically not allowed, hence verifiable user data is indeed transferred to you and/or the processors.
Also, it's not just CC details, but as with the magazine industry, I don't want you and your processing chain to know who *I* am. The relationship between providers of data/services and users of data/services is a very slippery slope. Anonymity is important, and should be available in many, if not most cases, and yet it's very difficult to provide anymore. The world of tracking and surveillance has reached way beyond what most people can even comprehend anymore, and it's out of control. At the moment, the only way to avoid having unregulated behavioral profiles created and tweaked 24/7/365 is to pay attention to things like not having your purchases and internet usage monitored. Apple's App Store does allow for this, as you can create account solely with iTunes gift cards, and as long as you're careful about when/were you purchase (and use) apps, it can indeed be 100% anonymous.
As for GDPR-compliance, it's great that the EU is on a good path, but it's very difficult to know how much or how well this is ultimately going to protect customers overall. UK has one of the most pervasive systems of tracking citizens in the "free" world, and yeah, Brexit, but it's mostly a big We'll See for now.
And as for the US being "years behind" in the area of secure payment infrastructure, I generally agree, but ApplePay in particular is a very strong player, with what appears to be a very strong model. But the US isn't just "behind" when it comes to customer privacy, we're not even on the same path or trajectory. "Behind" would imply that we're on the same path of progress, just farther behind, when in reality, we don't even seem to be on the same path right now, and that's very troubling.