davidw

eimoaotl said:

greginprague said:

eimoaotl said:

There is a lot of vitriol on here against Epic.  I personally think that iOS has become like Windows and Mac, where it is a general operating system and that Apple should no longer be allowed to determine what I can and cannot do with the operating system.  My phone and my iPad are not like my gaming console - I use my iOS devices for basically everything, I use my xbox just for gaming and streaming shows.  I don’t think iOS and gaming consoles are equivalent.  But I do think iOS and windows are equivalent as they are both operating systems that enable me to do “limitless” things depending on software and how much limitation Microsoft and Apple actually put on them.  Same goes for the Mac my wife uses. Can you imagine how angry people would be if Windows mandated that everything now had to go through the Windows store and through their payment system?

Windows has a dominant share of the computer operating system market.  iOS does not have a dominant share of the mobile operating system market in any country or geographical area.  You can choose to go somewhere else for your mobile platform if you are unhappy with the App Store.

But it actually does have dominant market share in certain regions.  Windows was 77% of desktop in Q4 2020.  IOS is 61% of mobile in the US, and where I live it is around 9-10/10 kids using iOS products, and reasons they won’t use Android is because it makes their friends iMessage bubbles green. Seriously, that is what kids have told me.  And that not having Apple means you are poor, and no kids want to be seen as poor.  Apple did well on their lock-in to keep iMessage Apple only.  

You are all over the place with your stats and comparing Apple to oranges.

In the US the OS marketshare are 

30% Windows
30% iOS
21% Android
14% MacOS
3.5% Chrome
1.5% other

Worldwide it's

40% Android
32% Windows
16% iOS
7% MacOS
1% Linux
2% other

But with just desktop OS Worldwide 

87% Windows
9.5% MacOS
2.5% Linux
.5% Chrome

with just mobile OS worldwide

72% Android
27% iOS
1% everyone else

Desktop OS US

60% Windows
28% MacOS
7% chrome
2.5% Linux
2.5% other


Mobile OS marketshare US

60% iOS
40% Android

The problem with the mobile OS marketshare stat in the US is that the numbers uses quarterly sales and it can changes rapidly from quarter to quarter. For now iOS is ahead by 20% because of the recent release of the new iPhones and iPads. But when Samsung releases their new phones, it can easily swing 5% to 8% in Android favor and it'll be  53% iOS and 47% Android. Then back again with the next cycle. It's only been since the last quarter of 2020 that iOS over took Android. Right now, I doubt very much that there are more iOS users than Android users in the US. But that can  change if Apple can keep their 60% marketshare for a few more quarters.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-share/

tenthousandthings said:

Apple said:

 ... We won't make an exception for Epic because we don't think it's right to put their business interests ahead of the guidelines that protect our customers.

... If Apple moves forward with its planned course of action, Epic will no longer be able to update the Unreal Engine ... Epic filed a temporary restraining order to halt Apple's escalation, saying the iPhone maker "is attacking Epic's entire business in unrelated areas."

So, basically, Epic’s strategy assumed Apple would not ban them as a developer. I wonder if this is standard practice for developers who purposely try to circumvent the in-app rules, or if it is an exception.

If it is an exception, it’s funny because Epic wanted Apple to make an exception for them, and they will have. Just not the exception they wanted!

If it is not, and this is standard practice, then it just shows how ill-considered the whole gambit has been.

What Epic did with Fortnight to bypass Apple in app paying method, did not result in Apple saying that they will pull Epic developer license at the end of the month. All Apple did was to ban Fortnight from the App Store. 

Apple discovered Epic was violating several other rules of their enterprise developer license and informed Epic that their license will be pulled unless they remedy it by the end of the month. There has been no mention of what those violations entails. Or at least I haven't found any source with detail about those other violations. But my guess is that it's on the scale of what Facebook did in violation of Apple Enterprise Developer license, when the allowed non employees to side load a data mining app. 


Apple threat of pulling Epic developer license is a separate issue, but Epic is making it seem that Apple is threatening to pull their developer license over what they did with updating Fortnight to bypass Apple in app paying method. And that is not true. All Apple did was to ban Fortnight from the App Store, until Epic fixed Fortnight to conform with the App Store rules. Like they would do with all apps that didn't conform to App Store rules. One does not lose their developer license just because they had an app that didn't conform to the App Store rules. How would Apple expect you to fix the problem than got your app banned, if they took alway your developer license and the use of the tools needed to fix the problem?  

foad said:

genovelle said:

foad said:

Spotify chose a loss-leading industry and is scapegoating iOS. They pay less to artists, overspent on podcasting, and are using the government to coverup their poor decisions. 

They created the loss-leader streaming model and then sold their souls to China and the record labels. Now they are complaining. 

I totally agree. I wonder how the economics will materially change if they don’t have to pay Apple’s fees. The vast majority of their user base isn’t subscribed through the App Store and podcasts aren’t an actual success. 

And yet that crybaby CEO of Spotify been crying about having to pay Apple 30% commission for over 10 years and going.  

chasm said:

Spotify is a fine service (that doesn’t pay its artists very well), and one that has a few advantages over Apple Music, including higher worldwide popularity.

However, the general poor ethics of the company ensure that I will never be using their service, within our without the App Store. Apple Music pays artists nearly THREE TIMES as much money as Spotify, and often has to be taken to court to get them to cough up the money at all.

Then there’s the whole DOH! Rogan thing. What a terrible error in judgement that was.

So, it’s Apple Music for me until a truly better option comes along.

That is just a statistical anomaly. Both Apple and Spotify paid subscription music streaming services, pays about the same percentage of their subscription revenue to the music industry. Neither pays the music artist on a per stream basis.  Both pays the songwriter royalty per stream, as required by copyright laws. For both, it comes to about 65-70% of the subscription revenue is paid to the music industry. (about 60% to be split among all the artists and about 10% to for the songwriters royalties.) 

The music industry take the about 60% of subscription revenue allotted to the artists every month (by each of the streaming services) and split it among all the artists whose  songs were streamed, based on what percentage their songs were streamed out of all the songs streamed by that service, that month. If a Taylor Swift mega hit album captured 5% of all the songs streamed, she will get 5% of the revenue allotted to the all artists that month. Regardless of the numbers of streams. (And she would also get paid a per stream royalty for songs where  she is the songwriter.) No artists are paid on a per stream basis. That number is worked out after the artists receives their portion of the monthly allotted subscription revenue. The number is what the artist earned per stream not what Apple (or Spotify) paid per stream. 

So if Apple and Spotify had exactly the same number of subscribers paying $9.99 a month, Apple would statistically be seen as "paying" the artists 3x more than Spotify, if Apple subscribers were streaming 3x less music than Spotify subscribers (per month). Even though both are paying the same 60% of subscription revenue to the artists.

That said, the main reason why Spotify is seen as "paying" artists 3x less (than Apple Music) is because of their free ad supported music streaming service. Streams from that service don't pay the artists nearly as much as streams made by a paying subscribers, but gets included in the total streams per month. That is also true of Google. The vast majority of music streams are done with Google free ad supported You Tube and the artists earns way less "per stream" based on ad revenue, than from subscription revenue. But both Spotify and Google generate much more revenue for the music industry, than what Apple Music generates. But Apple "pay per stream" numbers looks much better than nearly all the other music streaming services.   

https://pudding.cool/2022/06/streaming/

gatorguy said:

Anilu_777 said:

I still wonder why Google even cares about this and then why it’s pushing so hard. I don’t trust Google. 

Google cared because they wanted to offer private and secure messaging for the not-Apple community and no one else was willing to take on the effort and expense. Now that Google figured out how to offer it all over the world, and developed the structure and support, the carriers want in too. Nothing prevented it before except for those carriers doing what they could to maintain control over it to the detriment of consumers.  

omasou said:

If these quotes are even remotely correct. How in the world is this guy a CEO of any company?

So consoles hardware is sold at a loss therefore they deserve a 30% commission rate but Apple makes a profit selling hardware so they do not? Really? Do you seriously think someone who has gone to college, law school and had the experience to become a judge is stupid enough to buy that line of reasoning? Please!

Here's a more expanded version of what Sweeney actually said in court, about consoles selling at a loss. 

>During his testimony, Sweeney said Epic does pay commissions to other platform owners such as Sony Group Corp's PlayStation and Microsoft Corp's Xbox but explained that those hardware makers use fees from developers to subsidize the further development of their hardware.

Judge Gonzalez Rogers also asked her first direct questions of the trial during Sweeney's testimony, inquiring whether Apple's original iPhones from 2007 and 2008 were sophisticated enough to run Epic's video games. Sweeney said they were not.

“So Apple did have to do something to the iPhone itself in order for it to be sophisticated enough to play your software? How is that any different than consoles?” she asked.

Sweeney responded that the hardware development was similar, but the two devices had different business models.<

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epic-games-ceo-cites-apples-230408352.html


Just because games console makers adapted the "give away the razor and sell the blades" business model, doesn't mean that they are losing money on the sale of game consoles. It has been proven many times over, that this is a very profitable business model. I'm willing to bet that a game console in it's lifetime, generate much, much more profit for the makers (from the sales of games), than an iPhone in its lifetime, generate for Apple, from the sale of apps. 

There is no Apple "monopoly". Under the Sherman Act, iOS can not be consider a "relevant market" on which a monopoly is determined. The "relevant market" can not be (or very rarely can be) narrowed down to a single brand.  The "relevant market" in this case would be "mobile devices" or at the least ... "mobile OS". And Apple Pay is not a monopoly  in either of those markets. Apple would have a monopoly with Apple Pay only if the iPhone had a monopoly in the mobile device market or iOS is a monopoly in the mobile OS market.   

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=84446bf5-7cd3-4d98-8c43-e1000c2a7823

Microsoft have a monopoly with Windows OS because MS Windows is on 80% of the World's desktop computers. Not because Microsoft have 100% of the Windows OS market.

Just because one can only buy a Whopper at a BK, that doesn't mean BK, under the Sherman Act, have a monopoly with the Whopper. The "relevant market" would include all fast food burgers and not just the Whopper.  And BK is under no obligation to allow McDonalds to sell Big Macs in their BK diners, to compete with their Whoppers.     

gatorguy said:

chasm said:

Anilu_777 said:

I still wonder why Google even cares about this and then why it’s pushing so hard. I don’t trust Google. 

Oh, let me clarify that for you. Google wants to a) collect data from messages, and b) push rich advertising into messages, which of course they would benefit from.

I didn’t make this up — it’s been referred to in previous articles talking about Google’s version of RCS. Apple would never allow crap like that, so Google was never going to get Apple to adopt their version of RCS.

I am actually starting to feel bad for Android users, because if Google gets its way their experience in messaging is about to get a lot crappier.

Google cannot collect user data from Google Messages RCS. End of story. So yeah, you made that part up.

Can RCS be used for delivering rich media which could include advertising? Yup, but that's not a Google exclusive.

JP234 said:

macxpress said:

JP234 said:

genovelle said:

I bet Steve Balmer winces every time he reads his quote saying the iphone had no chance of gaining significant market share. 

I'm sure he's crying all the way to the bank. One of the ones he owns.

Maybe he's not, but I bet Microsoft is. He's the exact reason why Microsoft was completely left out of the smartphone space. He never took its competitors seriously and when you have companies like Apple entering your space you damn well better sit up straight and pay attention. 

Suppose you'd invested $1,000 in Microsoft on June 29, 2007, when the iPhone was introduced. What do you suppose it would be worth today?

At Friday's market close, that would now be $20,703.70.

Of course, by calculating the same metric, $1,000 in Apple on that day is now worth (are you sitting down?): $1,206,333.33

I doubt Microsoft is crying. But I bet Apple is popping the corks on Dom Perignon Vintage 2007! (BTW, it's because, adjusted for splits, Apple stock was worth 15¢/share on the day the iPhone was introduced. Microsoft was worth $16.20, over 100 times as much as Apple). Each currently have a market cap. approaching $3 trillion. Put away the kleenex!

Your numbers are way off!

You seem to be applying the splits to numbers that had already been accounted for the splits.

In June  of 2007, AAPL was about $140 and MFST was about $24. (split adjusted that would be $4.95 for AAPL)

$1000 invested in each in 2007 would get you 7 shares of AAPL at $140  and 20 shares of MSFT at $41 ( NOT using $4.95 for AAPL) 

Accounting for splits, today you would have 196 shares of AAPL (7 x 7 x 4) and 20 shares of MSFT

At today shares prices, that would be about $35,500 of AAPL (196 x $181)  and about $6,700 of MSFT (20 x $336)

Adjusted for splits on Jun 2007 ..... AAPL would be about $5.00 and MSFT would be about  $24 (share price alone can not be use to determine "worth" between the two.)

In 2007, Apple had a market cap of about $150B and Microsoft had a market cap of about $330B. So in 2007 Microsoft was "worth" only about twice that of Apple. But it took only 3 more years (in 2010) for Apple over take Microsoft in market cap. Apple went up from $150B to $222B while Microsoft went down from $330B to $220B. 

The comparing of current market caps between Apple and Microsoft is little misleading because in the past 10 years, Apple have bought back 10's of billions of dollars more of their AAPL shares than Microsoft have bought back their own MSFT shares. The number of outstanding shares is used to calculate the market cap. Apple been decreasing their outstanding shares at a much greater rate than Microsoft over the last 10 years.

BTW- I knew your numbers were off when you said that AAPL (after accounting for splits) would be at $.15 in 2007 when the iPhone came out. I knew that couldn't be right because the shares of AAPL that I bought when Jobs returned in 1998, cost me about $.17, split adjusted. And that included a 2 for 1 split in 2000 and another 2 for 1 in 2005, that would not have been included in 2007. It's $1000 invested in 1998 when AAPL was at about $20, that would be worth $1,000,000 today. Just 1 share of AAPL in 1998, would be 112 shares today. (if you didn't sell any on the way.)