tech_traveller

foregoneconclusion said:

carnegie said:

foregoneconclusion said:

godofbiscuitssf said:

So Apple has to allow companies to say "you go to <company's website URL> to subscribe", but Epic and other companies don't have a right to their own app stores?

The anti-steering ruling was specific to California state law. I believe Apple is still appealing that ruling, but if they ultimately lose then it's CA only. 

foregoneconclusion said:

flydog said:

foregoneconclusion said:

godofbiscuitssf said:

So Apple has to allow companies to say "you go to <company's website URL> to subscribe", but Epic and other companies don't have a right to their own app stores?

The anti-steering ruling was specific to California state law. I believe Apple is still appealing that ruling, but if they ultimately lose then it's CA only. 

What? No. Wrong!

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21060628/epic-apple-injunction.pdf

"The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals found last year that Apple violated California’s Unfair Competition Law by limiting the ability of developers to communicate about alternative payment systems."

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/supreme-court-rejects-apples-request-for-epic-app-store-review#

So what I was wrong about was that the appeal per anti-steering was ongoing. SC refused to hear both Epic and Apple's appeals.

The injunction against Apple's anti-steering policies applies nationwide even though it's based on violation of California law.

That doesn't make any sense. You don't extrapolate state laws to cover the entire country. You can say CA has the right to enforce the law because there isn't a federal law regarding anti-steering that takes precedence. 

danox said:

tech_traveller said:

One question though, can this be utilised by courts when Apple argues that they are not a monopoly?

As what? a monopoly of yourself? Android has 80% of the world market Apple however has the upper most profitable/preeminent part of the market that does not mean it has a monopoly. The EU does have a recently made up gatekeeper category for big international American tech companies. Note Apples marketshare is low in Europe, and is close/near to their worldwide marketshare percentage.

melgross said:

tech_traveller said:

Well, despite Tim Sweeney being a crook, you can't deny that this case helped developers.

Now they can advertise prices where they get 100% of the income, maybe we will even get cheaper options now.

They never get 100% of sales (it’s not income). Apple takes care of everything for them. But now, they will have to maintain a sales site, not just a information site. That’s costs money. They now have to do none of their accounting for sales as Apple does it. But with this, they will have to do their own. The costs continue. I’ll bet that in the end they will get about the same percentage after all those added in costs are accounted for.

what has been so easily forgotten is that when Apple first announced the App Store and spoke about the 30% and what developers were getting for it, they were dancing in the streets because other stores were charging between 40 - 60% and developers had to do all of their own accounting, marketing, etc. Apple’s low charges changed the industry and forced others to follow. But people forget the old world and begin to get greedy. I’ve read a number of times over the years that of the 30 cents Apple gets on every dollar of sales, they get 5 cents of profit. The rest is spent in software development of the store, marketing of products, accounting for themselves and developers products, and of course, the fact that about 2/3rds of what’s in the store is free where Apple gets nothing for downloads. Those free downloads cost Apple plenty and they have to be paid for through the paid apps.

so when developers started to sell things through their apps, such as extra features, loot for games and such, Apple decided they should get a cut. The fact that most of these sales were coming from “free” apps, most of which weren’t really that useful without the extra paid for features, it’s understandable that Apple would want a cut. These developers were really getting around the rules with this. If they all had it that way, Apple would only be getting the yearly $99 developers fee. That’s nowhere near enough to cover even part of the App Store costs. So I can understand Apple wanting to staunch the bleeding. Some of these companies are really blatantly arrogant. They want their store within Apple’s store without paying them anything, all the while getting paid for goods sold in their own stores. That’s too much!

I do agree with Apple allowing them to point to other sources for products though. That does make sense.