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Google Matches Apple's Plan To Give Developers A Bigger Cut of The Revenue (recode.net)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Recode: Apple announced a new revenue sharing model on Wednesday that would give developers more money when users subscribe to a service via their apps. Instead of keeping 70 percent of all revenue generated from subscriptions, publishers will be able to keep 85 percent of revenue, once a subscriber has been paying for a year. Google has decided to match Apple's latest offering. It too will move from a 70/30 split to a 85/15 split for subscriptions. However, instead of requiring developers to hook a subscriber for 12 months before offering the better split, it will make it available right away. Sources have said Google has been testing the new model over a year ago with video services in a way to get Play subscriptions to work with its TV streaming offerings like the Chromecast. Google has yet to announce when their new pricing plan will roll out. In other Google and Apple related news, Google's AI 'TensorFlow' software is coming to iOS to allow the iPhone to be able to run more sophisticated apps.
No one cares about related news, stop doing it.
I already shuttered my shop and got rid of both my people. I just don't want a business partner like Google or Apple that dictates what I can sell in the marketplace to the point where I have no freedom of expression. They also are fond of reaching deep into the pockets of those that keep them in business.
Probably more to do with they are each making so much profit from app stores for so little work, they can each follow the competitive pricing to the bottom without even bothering to do the sums.
It seems obvious to me that they are merely reaction to each other's actions.
And this time it's better for the developers so I don't really see anything negative here.
So Android devs now get to keep 85% of fuck all because hardly anyone using Andriod actually pays for their apps
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Capitalism is a crock, and it's always better (lowest risk, highest reward) to cooperate either tacitly or overtly.
it's only the idiots at the bottom that are taught successfully that's it's best to compete.
Not really. It strikes me more as a controlled leak on Google's part to try and derail Apple's intended narrative.
Apple announced the change in advance of WWDC next week because, to paraphrase, "the keynote speech is just too full of stuff to cover this". More or less, they're trying to build good press in advance, bring more awareness to the event, whet people's appetite for more announcements, and get some positive momentum going into the event. Which is especially needed on their part right now, because the narrative playing out in the media after last quarter's numbers is that Apple has hit its peak, is all washed up, and have got nothing left up their sleeves.
In contrast, the information coming out of Google is from unnamed sources within Google, rather than an official announcement. This wasn't something they were planning to announce two days ago, but it seems fair to think that they've been toying with the idea internally and were prepared to talk about it if Apple decided to do something similar at WWDC. With Apple announcing it early and the swell of good press both covering it and talking up WWDC next week, Google realized that their best move was to toss out a controlled leak that could help dampen Apple's good press a bit.
We've seen this exact same thing play out hundreds of times over the years. Competitor announces X and launches it before you can have your version of X to market? Let it leak that your version of X is even better and coming out soon. The press coverage ends up being rather similar for both, regardless of the fact that the nature of the information is vastly different between the two. As far as the press is usually concerned, a promised product is as good as a launched one.
There goes Android copying Apple again.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It's "coordinating" inasmuch as Google depends on this money more than Apple does and thus doesn't want to leave money on the table that they don't have to. It's no surprise that the leak would suggest they're matching Apple's numbers without beating them. Nor is the number they both picked particularly surprising, given that it's a simple halving of the previous rate.
You're assuming a conspiracy where none exists. Both of them are now providing better than the standard 30% rate that's the norm for the retail industry. That's not collusion.
When has Apple stolen from Google?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
With iOS, you can build any app and sell it through Cydia to any jailbroken iPhone.
You will actually have a much larger potential market than a side loaded Android app would, because all jail-breakers use Cydia. Most Android owners will never find, much less load, your side loaded Android app.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the not too distance past the 5th most downloaded app on the iOS app store made around $500 after taxes.
In other words, not enough for anyone to live on.
Certainly not those used to a regular developer's salary.
the standard 30% rate that's the norm for the retail industry
There was another "standard" 30% rate set by Apple and others...
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ebooks-idUSKCN0W91LQ ...what a short memory we have...
unless we get distracted by someth
I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that it is legal so long as there wasn't a colluding phone call where they agreed on 85%. Basically, the airlines do this and the courts have said, "meh."
The two situations are dissimilar in all the ways that matter. Agency pricing, which is what we're talking about here, is both legal and in widespread use across a variety of industries. There's nothing illegal about it whatsoever. Moreover, the reporter for your article got some fundamental facts regarding the case blatantly wrong, which may also explain why incorrectly believe that case has any bearing here.
For instance, the article inaccurately described agency pricing as "preventing discounting", which isn't correct in the least (e.g. see Steam). Under the agency pricing model, publishers get to set their own prices and the retailers take a percentage cut (in contrast with wholesale pricing, where the retailer pays a wholesale price and then sells it at whatever price they want for their margin). If a publisher wants to provide a discount, they're more than capable of doing so, and the retailer is more than capable of incentivizing them to do so, thus enabling healthy competition between stores.
What the article failed to mention by name was the single most important phrase of the entire case: Most Favored Nation (MFN). While MFN clauses--which specify that someone will always receive the best price offered to anyone else--are perfectly legal (e.g. we see them being used with wholesalers all the time), the courts ruled that you can't combine them with agency pricing, since doing so prevents competition.
More or less, wholesale pricing + MFN means that the MFN retailers get the best wholesale prices and then can compete by cutting into their own margins to provide discounts and drive competition. Agency pricing means that the retailers compete by incentivizing the publishers to provide discounts through their store but not through the other stores. Agency pricing + MFN, however, means that any discount a publisher gives to a retailer must also be given to all other MFN retailers. Even if a retailer were to cut their margins, the price wouldn't change since the publisher is setting it. And if the publisher chose to drop the price because you as a retailer cut your take, they'd have to drop it with your competitor too, even though your competitor didn't cut their take. That's why agency + MFN is illegal.
But none of that matters here in the least since neither Apple nor Google have MFN clauses in their contracts with app developers. As I said earlier, agency pricing by itself is perfectly legal and is in no way an indication of collusion. Quite the contrary, since agency pricing by itself is a fine way to have competition, and the fact that Google leaked their change right after Apple's announcement can be taken as evidence of that fact. One cut their margin, and the other had to do so as well to remain competitive.
I'll grant that it would raise some questions, but even if they talked, the suggestion of illegality would be a far stretch. I mean, what would they even be colluding on? Colluding to altruistically give back half their profits to developers? It makes no sense, and even if it happened, I doubt it would be any more illegal than competing companies agreeing to donate to the same charity.
Really, there's neither a need nor a benefit to colluding here. After all, doing what they did without colluding would potentially put them at a competitive advantage, whereas colluding to cut margins just hurts them both for no reason. The reason companies collude is so they can raise profits without worrying about the competition. Had they both raised their cut to 40% at the same time, that'd be cause for concern, but certainly not here.