cropr

Hedware said:

cropr said:

Being an app developer myself, I might share  what I will do when 3rd party app store and payment engines will become available for iOS apps. I don't develop games, only business related apps linked to a cloud service.  My apps are all available on iOS, Android and the Web (for PC and Mac)

1.  I will move all my apps to an app store that gives me much better marketing.    From a developer point of view the marketing of the Apple App Store sucks.   I did a survey among my customers and none of them have discovered my apps in the pApp store.     This is the main reason to move away from the Apple App Store.  In the first few years of the App Store the marketing was OK, but now there are so many apps on the App Store, that I have to provide my own marketing.
2. My ideal app store should not impose business restrictions as the Apple App store does currently:  it should allow me to give discounts to my clients who buy multiple apps from me, it should let me distribute vouchers, it should allow special "launch offers", it should allow to have another main currency (e.g. the Euro) so that when the exchange rate changes the cost in Euro does not change, but the cost in $ does.
   
3. My ideal app store should distribute iOS and Android versions of my apps, and should allow me to link the web version of my app.  I basically don't care which version of my app is downloaded.
   
4. For payments I would use Ingenico, a well respected payment service provider, that I am currently using for the web version of my apps (I never had any fraud issue with Ingenico).   As such I will have 1 single payment service provider for all my apps on all devices..  Operationally this will lower the cost of my accounting and my help desk.

I might assume that Apple after a while might react when more and more app stores becoming available.  Especially on point 2 Apple might move a bit to become more developer friendly.
 

I will buying from Apple Store only and not from ideal app stores as you suggest. You don’t offer enough to bother buying from your store. I am not interested in having to do evaluations of the payment gateway, the privacy safeguards and the security of my information of third part app stores. There’s plenty of fish in the Apple App Store. 

jfabula1 said:

Ah EU….sorry but Google is not EU company you can bully. Yes you can tax them the right way but ad is their business. If businesses are really hurting then dont advertise on their platform. Simple enough.

Taxing is not the concern of the European Commission (it are the member states who set up and collect taxes).  The EU commission is primarily concerned about a fair competitive playing field in the EU.  Whatever company that has too much market power in the EU in one domain and abuses this power in another domain, is under the scrutiny of the European Commission.    It appears that Google is abusing its market dominance in the technical ad sales business and the EU is reacting accordingly.    I cannot judge whether this is correct or not, but Google got already 3 times a fine for the abuse of its market dominance, so this is not a complete surprise.       Any EU, American, Chinese, Indian or British (yes they left the EU) company that wants to do business in the EU must comply with the EU rules of fair competition

lkrupp said:

Why bother, Apple? This is a done deal. You actually think you can talk the EU out of $15B? They’re drooling at the mouth to get their hands on that cash, most of which will wind up in their  own and their friends pockets. You worked out a deal with Ireland and years later the EU is now crying foul? How convenient for them. 

blastdoor said:

And the iPhone has a much lower market share than android in Europe, too. 

If apple’s HQ were in Paris I bet the EU would treat them very differently.

Just for information.    AB Inbev, the world largest brewer, received in 2019 a huge fine from the EU commission for anti competitive practices.  AB Inbev is a Belgian company with headquarters located roughly 15 miles from the EU commission offices. So no, Apple (or any big  American company) is not targeted because it is American, but because it is considered to behave anti competitive.  Whether the latter is true is up to EU court of justice to decide.

Calvin_Hobbes said:

"As it turns out, Spotify is mostly not subject to Apple's 30% commission either. After the first year of a subscription, Apple's fees drop to 15%."

oh.

Well that seems more than fair.

And while we're on the topic of complaining: Hey Spotify how about paying an actual user interface designer to clean up the train wreck that is your interface no matter what you're trying to do??

The Romans already said 2000 years ago:" De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum":   I find the Spotify UI better than the Apple Music UI.

loopless said:

And they are not inflating their figures are they? The growth seems unlikely given how popular iPhones are and I would imagine unless you really want to use Spotify you would use Apple Music. For 99% of people they are equivalent services and using Apple Music is frictionless.

Isn't it a little arrogant to assume that a "normal" personal has to choose Apple Music iso Spotify.  Why the heck should I prefer Apple Music above Spotify?    I don't see any technical or commercial advantage.  On the contrary.  In my family we have a multitude of devices (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android). The Apple Music app for Android is no match for the Spotify app and a Linux version is simply not existing. I would not associate Apple Music with a frictionless experience.

rob53 said:

As I've said many times before, people have plenty of choices on what products they want to buy. If you don't like Apple's way of doing things go with an Android platform or demand a company in the EU to build a new platform. Just because Apple's platform is the one many people want to use doesn't mean the EU has any right to tell Apple what to do. If you don't like what Apple is doing, find another platform. It's just like wine. If you don't want to pay for wine made in the EU, then grow your own, which the USA has done. 

omasou said:

libertymatters said:

A maze of red tape to make it prohibitive.  An alternative app store on macOS requires no interaction or input from Apple at all.  An example is MacPorts.  The real answer here is customers demanding app freedom on iOS and iPadOS from Apple and voting with their dollars if Apple doesn't deliver.  The same app freedoms should exist on iOS/iPadOS as has existed on macOS since 1984: 'sideloading' allowed.  The very term 'sideloading' is itself a loaded term that presumes an authority that Apple doesn't have, control of YOUR device.  It is your device not Apple's.  You should be able to load on it whatever app you darn well please.   That is still true on the Mac.  It should be true for iPhones too.

What customers are demanding app freedom? The only one's that care are the greedy app publishers.

People seem to forget past development costs.

• Developer accounts were way more than $99.
• Documentation was in the form of expensive books
• Distribution required duplicating discs, then CDs and today web sites, etc.
• Advertising is never cheap

Today...

• Developer accounts are relatively inexpensive at $99
• Documentation is free.
• Distribution & Advertising
• Yes, today you can stand up a web site, not free.
• Yes, you can use an alternative app store, also not free.
• Oh, you plan to use social media to advertise...good luck only works, if people know you exist.

 Hopefully, we'll see a migration of a lot of the junk apps to these other stores. It will only server to improve the value of Apple's app store search.