Radarthekat: exactly right. Apple could pay itself the 30%, but that wouldn't mean anything. Apple, however, has to shoulder the burden of running the whole store, dealing with the credit card companies, etc. Its developers do not; that's why they pay 30% of their revenue to Apple. It's been over seven years since Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer publicly stated that Apple runs the App Store at "just a little over break even." What does the EU want, Apple to operate the App Store at a loss? And do they really think Apple will just go along with that?
I have myself running a cloud service for my customers, so I have a good idea about the operational costs of an "App Store like" service. It will in the order of magnitude of 1% of the total App Store revenue Apple is publishing. Of course we need to add some percentage for credit card processing. The market price for secured credit card transactions is 2.25%, but I am sure Apple has a better deal. Even if my guess about the operational costs is a factor 3 wrong, the total cost will be below 5% and there is still a 6 to 1 revenue/cost ratio. A remarkable definition of "a little bit over break even".
If I would be allowed to host my own app store infrastructure, my total cost would be around 3%, the credit card processing included.
Radarthekat: exactly right. Apple could pay itself the 30%, but that wouldn't mean anything. Apple, however, has to shoulder the burden of running the whole store, dealing with the credit card companies, etc. Its developers do not; that's why they pay 30% of their revenue to Apple. It's been over seven years since Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer publicly stated that Apple runs the App Store at "just a little over break even."
Seven years ago the "just over break-even" was likely true. Don't mistake a statement from Oppenheimer back then as a pledge to run it sans profit. That was never Apple's intent nor even what he implied. The App Store is immensely profitable for Apple today, adding $B's per year to the bottom line.
THIS IS NOT A THREAD ABOUT POLITICS. SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.
I rather think the discussion flowed smoothly to the topic. EU regulation of Apple, EU ignoring regulation of Google, Google being proven to manipulate search results to push their narrative, prominent example of said manipulation being listed (which happened to be political). I agree with your statement in principle, Crowley, however you must understand that any discussion of Google’s search result manipulation is going to be inherently political, simply because of who owns Google, what their ideological goals are, and the manner in which they have universally bent (faked, lied, hoaxed, manipulated... psychologically programmed is probably the best phrase) their search results through their monopoly of internet data transmission and discussion.
I won’t say any more. The thread’s about the EU (OOPS IT’S ALREADY POLITICAL) abusing their already communist totalitarian power to bully Apple into doing what they want. My point was off-topic and I won’t bring it up again.
THIS IS NOT A THREAD ABOUT POLITICS. SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP.
EU regulation of Apple, EU ignoring regulation of Google...
And I thought you might actually be more aware of current events.... I was mistaken. Perhaps you didn't actually read the AI article? Here's another that explains the same thing but from a different perspective.
https://www.ft.com/content/c6932a32-2797-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
Comments
I won’t say any more. The thread’s about the EU (OOPS IT’S ALREADY POLITICAL) abusing their already communist totalitarian power to bully Apple into doing what they want. My point was off-topic and I won’t bring it up again.
https://www.ft.com/content/c6932a32-2797-11e8-b27e-cc62a39d57a0
...and yet another that plainly disproves what you apparently believe. Yay for more government regulation right? Free market forces aren't acceptable.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/27/technology/business/google-eu-antitrust-fine/index.html