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Apple Says Spotify Wants 'the Benefits of a Free App Without Being Free' (engadget.com)
Apple has responded to Spotify's European Commission (EC) complaint. In a press release, the company said that Spotify "seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem ... without making any contributions to that marketplace." It added that the App Store has generated $120 billion for developers while offering users a secure platform, and that Spotify is seeking to side to sidestep the rules that every other app follows. From a report: "Spotify has every right to determine their own business model, but we feel an obligation to respond when Spotify wraps its financial motivations in misleading rhetoric about who we are," the company wrote. Spotify's main argument was that Apple's own music service, Apple Music, isn't subject to the same restrictions of its own app. "[A]pps should be able to compete fairly on the merits, and not based on who owns the App Store," wrote CEO Daniel Ek. "We should all be subject to the same fair set of rules and restrictions -- including Apple Music." It added that Apple had often stymied it on app updates and locked it out of Apple services, "such as Siri, HomePod and Apple Watch." Finally, it noted that Apple had blocked communication with its own customers on things like special offers. In response, Apple addressed each complaint point by point, while criticizing Spotify's treatment of musicians and artists. It said that it has approved nearly 200 app updates, and "the only time we have requested adjustments is when Spotify has tried to sidestep the same rules that every app follows."
to Apple. Problem solved.
The TRUTH is, Apple is a dick when it comes to the handling of the app store and its walled garden iron fist controls. They could be better and should be.
The TRUTH is, Spotify is ruining music in many ways by paying fractions of pennies in royalties. Some artists with millions of song plays have received on $80 for a year of royalties. Fix that, then stop trying to side step app store rules. They could be better and should be.
Two companies who are both pulling bullshit are mad at the other for pulling bullshit. That's the Truth.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I haven't had an iPhone since the 3gs but back then you couldn't get apps that would stream music over the cell data network. The Palm Treo I had previously did it just fine, but the Iphone locked it to Itunes only. I couldn't stream music off my server unless on my local wireless network.
12:50 - press return.
30% tax is .... at the very least immoral
hopefully illegal too
For a start if it something is free on the store then they are still taxing it at 30%. Just 30% of nothing. But Spotify isn't being done like that, they're being held up behind obfuscation and obstruction in contacting their users. Which is kind of what you DON'T pay money to a thirdparty warehouse salesfront to do.
IF the choices were taxed 30% and that paid for the storage, arranging payments and user access for the purchaser of the product through their store charging them that 30%, OR 0% tax (well LESS than 30% at least, even if not 0%) but either you asked Apple to ask your users so that you were basically paying by offering up your customers to Apple to turn into revenue, THEN spotify would be wanting their cake and the eating of it too.
As it is, what the fuck are they paying Apple to get in the way of their customers for? Purely because Apple have a monopoly on access and are ABUSING IT.
If Apple gets out of the way and lets "Spotify paid-for" access their customers who HAPPENED to buy via the Apple Store like any other storefront would do, but Spotify were still upset, THEN I'd say Spotify is in the wrong, or at the very least looking to get a better deal on that 30% cut Apple take, which is free market fundamentals and selfish (since the free market bases itself on a driving force of selfishness).
As it is, Apple are wrong here and are making shit up to suit their purposes and, since the monopoly is a government granted right (copyright), the government should be called in to police abuses of that monopoly.
"the only time we have requested adjustments is when Spotify has tried to sidestep the same rules that every app other than an Apple app follows."
That extra, bolded part, is what Spotify is complaining about, Apple. You have terms you are hell-bent on forcing on others, but you don't have to play by those rules yourself, do you...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Spotify, why Apple would want to make things easier for you?
I suspect Netflix is next, since Apple is set to launch its competing streaming app.
While I think Apple's 30% tax is extortionate, Apple should get a swift kick in the nuts from a judge over that, but I cannot blame Apple for wanting a cut. If you had a brick and mortar electronics store would you sell Google/Apple streaming boxes without being compensated? ... spend your resources on flogging a product for somebody else for free? If Spotify thinks any app vendor is in the business of handing out their app for free to their users without getting some form of compensation then Spotify is delusional. Apple has also no business preventing Spotify from being able to spam its users on Apple platform to its hearts content through their app if they are really dead set on annoying users off their service, but requiring Apple to handle their e-mail traffic is a bit much.
As with so many matters that involve money, arguments fly around left and right that claim to be on principle, but really aren't.
When you see ESPN and Comcast argue over showing the World Series, don't buy the argument that one of them is "trying to prevent loyal customers from being able to see their favorite game", or when your local hospital group withdraws from your employer health plan that "the other side is trying to deprive you of consumer choice".
Each side is wanting to make a share of the money, and they're disagreeing over the price (or often the royalties share). No one is entitled to any particular provision of service in *any* of these cases. Except in regulated industries there's no law governing the "fair" share that someone has to offer, or someone has to accept. And in most cases, each side could choose to compromise what it's asking for with no damage to its model of business (not talking about $, just the principles they claim).
Spotify wants a lower $ charge. Apple owns the platform and controls that access and $ charge. That's it.
This is a private contract dispute and only of interest because you care about listening to music. There's no public right to have a music app be charged a certain amount that's called "fair". Spotify could charge nothing to consumers, and be charged nothing by Apple. It's their choice. It's Apple's choice.
Don't be fooled into "principles" when there's money involved.
The situation is not quite as simple as that though. Apple has a monopoly on the market for everyone that uses iPhone while a brick and mortar store would have to compete against other stores. It's more comparable to Visa and Mastercard taking a 30% cut of each sale made at every store unless it's a store owned by Visa/Mastercard.
If Apple had a completely unlocked phone where multiple appmarketplaces could compete for customers they could charge a 90% cut for all I care. But when they lock out the competition it gets very shady. In my mind they are abusing their monopoly position just like Microsoft and Intel did in their heydays, to the detriment of us all.
The actual logic is: Follow the money.
Apple has a monopoly on its turf. Defending that monopoly is Apple's Job #1. Each and every characteristic must be defended. It's pretty brilliant if you think about it, and totally unfair to competition. It makes stacks of money almost unparalleled in the history of business, creating a cash pool across the planet that is the envy of many businesses.
Not that it's fair or just or competitive.
Various economic shocks have made the DoJ insensitive to these things. Legislation that worked great in the 1940s has no meaning here. The US courts used to be the model of justice and even consumer-side law for decades, but now it's been broadsided by the realities of modern media and distribution infrastructure.
If the EU doesn't fall apart somehow, it might be able to lead the anti-trust fight, but tiny Spotify is not going to be the David to Apple's Goliath because Google/Android provides a sufficient straw-man competitor that Apple will argue endlessly that they do have competition. Apple's legal team is financed by one of the largest pools of cash ever amassed in the history of this planet. That's how monopolies are protected, a hundred small battles at a time.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
In what way is Spotify locked out of Siri? They opened up Siri to third party integrations... are they supposed to do the work for Spotify?
If Apple Music is so terrible Spotify should have no trouble eating their lunch... all they need to do is take credit card payments directly instead of using in app purchases.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Any other payment service charge will be around 2% but they try to justify 30% (but hey you get to 15% eventually right?). Apple also acts like they are the ones causing the downloads... no dude you are just a large market share of phones. Not every app gets 300 million downloads, it is the quality of the app that causes that. Stop trying to take credit for other people's work.
If Apple isn't going to allow any other apps or apps stores to be loaded except through their app store, then they shouldn't be allowed to charge any percent. If they allowed other stores and side loading, then it would be fair to charge whatever they wanted. This is basically like saying you can only buy parts and accessories for your car through the dealership.
For Apple, services is the future, so the more locked in, the better monopoly they have on services, the better they will do. While Spotify is an APP, it is also a competing service to Apple Music. This is sort of like the anti-trust cases against Microsoft for 'bundling' Internet Explrorer and other 'default' apps into Windows while making it difficult to change the Defaults. Eventually, iOS will be seen like the desktop, with applications a separate layer from the OS itself. Once that future court case is done, Apple won't be able to 'special' select it's own apps to be the only apps that work.
1) Apple has lawyers and accountants; likely they are doing the minimum required. That said, talented people in those areas likely have creative accounting techniques for minimizing their self-payment.
2) Apple's counterpoint is a clear win; Spotify is just being another greedy corp testing the boundaries. That said, Apple didn't address how they pay themselves so I would guess something isn't quite right... the lawyers might be preparing to remedy that if that could be disclosed in detail.
3) They said "Apple connects Spotify to our users" which indicates they feel 100% safe in a self-created gatekeeper monopoly market in openly saying they do exactly what people don't like and going on to justify it. They are safe on this front because it is essentially the same as any retail store... just because it's on the internet people confuse freedom with what retail actually is.
4) 30% is high if you don't understand retail. It is well within, if not LOW when you think of actual retail store markups. Apple probably puts in more effort than Amazon or Google in curation of their store and app review to legitimately justify that cost; like a actual retail store has to stock items etc. If they spend the same labor $ as a real store doing diligent maintenance and curation of their store then the 30% is worth it.
5) If you look over Apple's details, you'll see that they have a huge volume of Apps that skip the 30% fee. So clearly they are shifting the majority of overhead costs to the big players who can afford it. They don't mention what their profits or operating costs are for their store ; perhaps somebody could find an SEC report? I would guess that it is on the high end of normal and nothing close to typical monopoly profits.
6) Private corps need more regulations. They are not a person with human rights; that should be obvious. If you refuse to allow black people in your store, you should have major legal problems (your personal house, it's your right to be racist.) If you refuse to sell anything made by black people, you should have major legal problems. Sadly the process in resolving such issues is poor at best; it needs to be made better and GENERIC. Apple should be forced to allow FIREFOX with their browser engine on their app store and the decision should not be theirs; all that BS about wasting RAM or security on another browser engine shouldn't be possible.
Note: I will not buy a phone I can't run firefox on.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Apple needs apps from third parties in order to have a useful platform. Spotify benefits Apple ecosystem by gracing the App Store with their presence. No need to send remuneration to Apple at all.
Spotify cannot reasonably compete head to head with Apple on their app because as Microsoft has proven, there is no room for any more ecosystems. I could blame Microsoft because they should have seen the whole 'app store' thing coming, but Spotify is a new company that didn't have the fortune to get their foot in the door in time. Apple has an unfair leverage against Spotify.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
When you got your iPhone, you knew you were locked into the Apple Store, right?
No. When the iPhone was introduced, it had no App Store. The "lock-in" was in the other direction: playing iTunes Music Store purchases required an iPhone (or an obscure model of Motorola flip phone), though the iPhone could play music acquired elsewhere. Apple added the App Store came in iOS 2, and its lock-in was and is bidirectional: adding apps to the iPhone requires the App Store, and App Store apps require an iPhone. People who bought an iPhone because of compatibility with FairPlay DRM on pre-2009 iTMS purchases ended up additionally locked into the App Store once iOS 2 came out.
Bullshit. You knew there was only an App Store on the iPhone. But it is not a monopoly because the iPhone is not a monopoly.
The country you were born in, or the country of your descent precludes choice in the matter, and a government is a de facto monopoly on your rule.
The App Store is apple's way of distributing third party apps. If you don't like it, feel free to develop on another platform. If you don't like it, feel free to buy any other phone.
That's what precludes it from being a monopoly. Apple's success is that they have given consumers and developers what they want, and stayed in-bounds enough not to drive their users and developers away.
Perhaps artists should focus on making their money on concert ticket sales and merchandising
What steps can a recording artist take toward "making their money on concert ticket sales and merchandising" in each of the following cases?
A. The recording artist is independent and relies on income from a day job, which rules out touring, but seeks a way to recover the costs of further production of recordings.
B. The recording artist specializes in a musical style that is impractical to perform live, such as the second half of The Beatles' discography or several forms of electronic dance music.
they could easily avoid [Apple's 30% cut of IAP] by simply pushing the user out of the app or even taking credit card information in the app.
The App Store Review Guidelines ban "pushing the user out of the app" or "taking credit card information in the app" except for physical goods.
I have made a retail app on iOS, you could put things in your cart, put in your credit card info and check out just like on a web page and apple didn't get a dime for it
Were the "things" physical? If so, that is the material difference between your app and Spotify.
If you owned a shopping mall, and had your own restaurant inside that mall as well, would you charge yourself the same as you charged other restaurants?
The accountants would make up some nominal amount to put down in the "rent" category in order to itemize tax-deductible expenses. And in order to keep privileges that the city's zoning board grants to the mall, a city aware of the possibility of monopoly abuse would require this rent to be within a reasonable range of what Chick-fil-A and other tenants in the food court pay.
It's 30% for the first year of a subscription, then 15%. Spotify is not paying anywhere near 30%.
Except in regulated industries there's no law governing the "fair" share that someone has to offer, or someone has to accept.
Music is a regulated industry pursuant to Title 17, United States Code. In addition, the Sherman Act as amended regulates certain aspects of all industries that engage in "commerce [...] among the several states".
Spotify wants a lower $ charge. Apple owns the platform and controls that access and $ charge.
Specifically, Spotify alleges that Apple is "dumping" the service of negotiating with labels and operating streaming servers by providing it to users for free. (In competition law, dumping refers to pricing a good or service below cost in order to harm competitors.) If the music publishers and record labels get 70 percent, and the App Store gets 30 percent, what does that leave for the service of negotiating with labels and operating streaming servers?
This is basically like saying you can only buy parts and accessories for your car through the dealership.
Then how have companies like Nintendo been getting away with the same behavior since 1985?
>The country you were born in, or the country of your descent precludes choice in the matter
Nonsense, there's this thing called emigration that's available to everyone. Every day you live in your birth country instead of leaving is a fresh choice in the matter.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Apple just wants to profit 30% from all the hard working developer revenue. And I do not particularly eye here Spotify, but all the small indie ones. We work so hard, day & night, weekends, rare holidays you name it, and Apple just grabs 30%. As if they do not have enough money, and we would thankful directly sell it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And that fee covers everything from credit card processing to hosting and bandwidth, which for all of the free app downloads that Spotify enjoys is a non-negligible amount of money.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
People want the benefits of products without paying for them.
What exactly is there to this accusation?
The major flaw in your comparison is that Windows represented over 90% of the computing market compared to Apple. When it comes to iOS market share as Android fans will tell you repeatedly that iOS (around 20%) is much less than Android (almost 80%).
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You can sell apps for the iPhone without paying a single fraction of a penny to Apple.
Your customers may have issues installing the app on their phones, however.
If Apple had a completely unlocked phone where multiple appmarketplaces could compete for customers they could charge a 90% cut for all I care. But when they lock out the competition it gets very shady. In my mind they are abusing their monopoly position just like Microsoft and Intel did in their heydays, to the detriment of us all.
I have an Apple iPhone; I'm on my second one. Prior to my first one I had an iPod Touch. I have deliberately chosen the iPhone over all of its Android competitors because of the way that Apple has built IOS and the way that Apple administers the app store. Although I appreciate being able to freely install and run software on my home computer, I also appreciate the "walled garden" approach on my phone as I want it to work more like an appliance and less like another system that I have to administer. I don't see how this could work as effectively without Apple's "monopoly" power over their app store. If I wasn't happy with that, I could easily have chosen a platform with an alternative approach, namely Android. Apple's "monopoly" is over their product and what can run on their product. In my opinion that control is PART OF THE PRODUCT and is one of the things that causes me to choose Apple over Android.
Apple doesn’t charge 30% for free apps. Apple doesn’t charge 30% for subscription users to use Spotify. They do charge 30% if users pay Spotify through Apple’s store.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I don't know what the breakdown is, but surely there are more users of spotify's free, ad-based service than there are subscribers. Maybe by a lot. So Spotify pays 30% for some small slice of users, 15% for a somewhat larger slice, and 0% for everybody else. They're just taking a shot at getting more money. There's no downside to trying. If it doesn't work then nothing changes. They're freerolling.
I use Apple Music simply because:
1). I don't give a shit about "discovering" music. I listen to the same shit I've been listening to since the 80s.
2). I just want one billing source to deal with. I will gladly pay extra for that. Spotify objects to using that billing source and paying whatever fee may be involved? Well fuck them then.
3). As an AAPL shareholder, I'd rather give money to Apple than some other company, when a reasonable opportunity to do so exists.
If you want to "find out" about other music, go on the web and find out about it. Nothing is stopping you.
As for Spotify...it's a service where people LISTEN to stuff. What is to stop Spotify from injecting into its audio stream ads like, "Hey, we have a special deal for you that we know you would live - click the button on the app now!" Nothing! But oh, wait, that's right! Their users don't want to be bothered listening to their stupid fucking ads. Well guess what?! They don't want to get emails or text messages with their stupid fucking ads either!
No payment prosessing service hosts the app and distributes it either as you don’t seem to acknowledge that processing payments isn’t the sole purpose of the Apple Store. The closest competitor to Apple App Store is Google Play which charges the exact same amount.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Oh, and I don't give a shit about Siri integration either. I have that shit turned off.
And that fee covers everything from credit card processing to hosting and bandwidth, which for all of the free app downloads that Spotify enjoys is a non-negligible amount of money.
I think Spotify is more than happy to cover their own ~3% or so credit card processing fees.
The app is around 30MB, so even at 10 cents/GB for bandwidth, that's $0.003 per download, and again, I think Spotify would be more than happy to pay that if they could host the app on their own servers.
Apple charges developers $99/year for the app store, and developers should be able to choose whether or not they want to pay Apple for credit card fulfillment and bandwidth. Most small developers will likely still want to pay Apple, but larger developers may want to take that on themselves.
Oh god Apple is bitching about them not getting money for doing nothing.. The Apple store is just one big ripoff for developers, Apple is getting richt over the backs of other for doing hardly anything. They could easily run their store with profit when they would lower their take to 10% (no no % for subscriptions).
no freebies, Gotta pay
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It added that the App Store has generated $120 billion for developers while offering users a secure platform, and that Spotify is seeking to side to sidestep the rules that every other app follows.
I always laugh when they quote revenue figures instead of profit. It doesn't matter how much revenue they generated if it isn't making any profit. As a professor of mine once said, you can make a LOT of revenue selling $2 bills for $1 - you just won't be in business very long doing it. You see this all the time in entrepreneurial magazines. They'll quote how much revenue some new business is doing and leave out the fact they are losing money hand over fist.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't use Spotify so I don't really care what they do. My initial impulse is that if Spotify wants to use Apple's platform then Apple gets to charge whatever they want. If Spotify doesn't like it then that isn't Apple's problem. I doubt Spotify would do Apple a solid if the roles were reversed. Trying to compete head to head with Apple on Apple's platform doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
I literally explained the one thing that they choose to do that causes them to pay apple... maybe you should work on your reading comprehension.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Actually, it is a negligible amount of money. Credit card processing fees for a company that size are probably a quarter of a percent plus a flat fee of ten cents, or about thirteen cents total per month, which is a full three bucks less than what Apple takes in the first year, and a buck and a half less thereafter. Even for tiny companies with a lot of chargebacks, it won't be more than a couple of percent or so.
There's no way in you-know-where that Spotify uses anywhere near three dollars' worth of bandwidth every month. Right now, a quick Google search for bulk bandwidth comes up with a price of $1300 for a month of 10 gigabit-per-second service. Three dollars, then, would be 23 megabit-per-second usage continuously. For Spotify to break even, they would literally have to ship a new version of their app to each user several times per minute. Heck, even if Netflix streamed 4K video content through Apple's servers, it still wouldn't use three dollars' worth of data per customer.
No, Apple's fees are utterly extortionate, pure and simple. But they can get away with it (for now) because web apps are basically unusable on iOS, and companies that want to make apps available on their platform have no alternative but to distribute them through Apple's store. Apple's recent actions to kill the signing certificates of companies that distributed apps outside the iOS App Store only further serves to drive that point home, just in case anyone might otherwise have considered enterprise distribution as a possible alternative.
So at least prima facie, it looks like Apple is illegally using their position running the app store to give their own products in an unrelated area (music) an unfair competitive advantage, which is a flagrant violation of antitrust laws. And I predict they will repeat these same violations with TV content soon enough.
That said, I don't think breaking Apple up is the right solution, though I would not discount the possibility. The right fix is to compel Apple to stop violating the law and fine them a large enough sum of money that it exceeds the benefit they illegally reap from violating the law — say 15% of all App Store revenue every month until they fix the problem.
IMO, there are only three ways Apple can avoid violating the law here:
The last one is the best choice, because it benefits everyone equally, allows free software to simply distribute itself directly without Apple having to pay for it (thus allowing Apple to lower their fees considerably), and doesn't create confusing chaos involving multiple app stores, but even the first one, under supervision of a federal antitrust regulator, would also be acceptable. Either way, I have no faith in Apple doing the right thing without legal action, and that makes me sad.
And yes, I've been saying this for years now. It's sad that it took until this year for anybody in the federal government to start paying attention, but now that they are, I suspect Apple's tying agreements and other dubious behavior will receive some much-needed scrutiny in the near future.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh, that's very generous of you on behalf of Spotify. Now, what do you propose Spotify should pay for the access Apple provides to 1bn+ active users who all enjoy a consistent experience with Spotify's app due to the iOS platform and for Apple's provision of the ability for each of those users to instantly pay Spotify money?
Oh, you mean the 1B customers that bought a phone so they can run apps on it?
But I say let the consumers decide how much that consistent experience is worth -- let them pay Spotify direct, or pay 30% more to use Apple's system to pay through the app.
How much would it cost you to build a web server, a content server, a payment processsing server, and the network required to scale to hundreds millions of users. If you think that is cheap or easy I don’t think you’ve spent one day working in the real world of IT.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Those 1bn customers bought iPhones so that, among other things, they could install apps without worrying they were going to break their phones, which is what Apple promises. Spotify want access to that, understandably, and the terms chafe, understandably. But tough.
It's in Spotify's gift to set differential pricing (ie X via the web or an Android store where Spotify isn't charged a fee, if such a thing exists; X+30% via the App Store). And of course, Spotify does set differential pricing, with both a free and a pay model. But Apple isn't obliged to facilitate direct payments to Spotify with zero cut for itself via apps curated and downloaded in its Store, no matter how much this outrages your conscience.
GIven apple's enormous profit margins.. i think it costs less then you think.
Google Play Apps With 150 Million Installs Contain Aggressive Adware
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
Tell me again the problem with Apple's walled garden?
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Given that you’ve never read Apple’s financials, their apps do not make them a lot of profit as many of them are free. Yet they have to maintain the infrastructure. They make the bulk of their profits on hardware. Check it for yourself.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Microsoft had > 90% of the desktop OS market, which is why they were considered a gateway to users. There was no other option. That's why they were a monopoly. They dominated the market. IOS world wide is in the 'teens in terms of market penetration, so yeah... bullshit to your bullshit on my bullshit.
Tell that to the masses shot and killed trying to get over the Berlin Wall, or the starving and parasite riddled North Koreans. Or the masses waiting for a Visa to enter the US.
No, not everyone has that freedom.
Apple also has a monopoly on iOS cameras... but iOS itself isn't a monopoly. That means it doesn't make the App Store a monopoly.
But the thing is, I bought a *phone*. I did not buy a service, I did not buy a license. I bought a physical product, a phone. And I should be able to use that phone as I wish. If I bought an Intel CPU, and Intel told me that I would only be able to play Intel approved games on it (so they could charge developers 30%), that would be a serious abuse of monopoly powers. It doesn't matter that I could buy AMD, it's still abuse of their position. If I buy a physical product, I should be able to use that physical product according to my needs and desires.
Should your car brand be allowed to determine where you are allowed to drive with your car? Because that is exactly what Apple is doing. They are selling a physical product and then deciding how you are allowed to use it. Just like that short bout of draconian DRM where you bought a physical disc for a game but you were only allowed to install it 3 times.
Given that youâ(TM)ve never read Appleâ(TM)s financials,
That is a terrible assumption on your part...
You mean stuff like this:
Apple reported that its App Store generated over $26.5 billion in revenue for developers in 2017, which was up about 30% year-over-year. This means that the App Store created approximately $11.5 billion in revenue for the company. Growth of services revenue is one of the major positive points for investors since it is growing faster than the rest of the company with higher margins
A tragic point. I stand corrected.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You bought a phone and knew exactly what you were getting along with it. To pretend otherwise is just BS. If you don't like it, buy a different phone.
Just another day in Paradise
Apple reported that its App Store generated over $26.5 billion in revenue for developers in 2017, which was up about 30% year-over-year. This means that the App Store created approximately $11.5 billion in revenue for the company. Growth of services revenue is one of the major positive points for investors since it is growing faster than the rest of the company with higher margins.
You also said:
GIven apple's enormous profit margins.. i think it costs less then you think.
Do you understand the difference between revenue and profit?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If you had a brick and mortar electronics store would you sell Google/Apple streaming boxes without being compensated?
The enormous profit they make on the devices they sell is the compensation, the incentive for people to buy them is the wide variety of choice on the App Store.
spend your resources on flogging a product for somebody else for free?
Yes, in fact most of the apps in the App Store are exactly that, free, with many of the developers of those apps still making money via in-app ads.
But the thing is, I bought a *phone*. I did not buy a service, I did not buy a license.
Nope, definitely a license on that software.
They are selling a physical product and then deciding how you are allowed to use it.
No it is both hardware and software but go ahead, wipe the software off it and do what you wish, go install Linux on it or something.
And that fee covers everything from credit card processing to hosting and bandwidth, which for all of the free app downloads that Spotify enjoys is a non-negligible amount of money.
So how is that different from all the free, ad-supported apps?
Apple doesn't post profit by line, the same as they are trying to move away from publishing units sold.
Do explain want you think this line means "with higher margins"
Good comment.
Yes, there is a license on the software, and while I don't like that, it's pretty standard by now. Fair enough. The part I consider monopoly abuse is that I'm locked into it in a practical sense.
I don't mind wiping the phone at all, but it is a non-trivial effort for most people. If it was available as a simple service for *everyone* I would be content. Though at that point it would probably be easier (and better) if Apple simply allowed non-Apple marketplaces.
So you're saying you cant survive without an iphone? Seems like you have a mental illness, you should probably be seeing a doctor instead of trying to be smart on slashdot.
Cydia, Jailbreak your iphone or STFU.
That was my point exactly: how can you possibly state that they make enormous profit when you can’t know unless you work in Apple accounting. Also “higher margins” is meaningless with exact numbers. 3% is higher than 2%. Also Apple stated that “services revenue” is growing. Services revenue for Apple includes everything from media, apps, iCloud, etc.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Part of an iphone for the plebs is the "experience". Seriously you cant make this shit up. What apple is doing, and iirc has even claimed so publicly is guaranteeing the "experience". It is a luxury item not a phone. That is like expecting to install your pinto radio in a Ferrari. sure with modification it can be done. Same is true for iphone. However neither will be supported or warrantied by the manufacturer.
Yes because its so easy to pick "quality apps" form the 3000 google play stores. GLHF finding a way to remove the bootloader root kit.
grab a reasearch report on AAPL.. take a read..
let us know why apple is moving more and more to "serivces" if it isnt profitable?
The revenue Apple makes from services is growing; however, you can’t possibly state that they make “enormous profit” on apps. If I were to guess they are getting growing revenue off ApplePay.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Spotify could upload their app, but they hardly need to do that, being the owners of the company making it, and it really REALLY doesn't help sell it when the only person able to "sideload your own apps" and avoid Apple is yourself. Kinda limited customer base, there.
As an iOS developer you can sideload your own apps to your phone. This is not new.
To use Apple's App Store, they have to abide by terms of Apple. Spotify can upload their app, and users download their apps for free every single day. Apple charges NOTHING for this. If companies do not generate revenue through their apps, Apple charges NOTHING. What Apple is charging is if users pay Apple through the Spotify app. For example if I pay for HBO through HBO.com, Apple charges nothing. If I pay HBO through HBO Now app, HBO Go app, Apple takes 30%. If HBO charge $1 per app, Apple gets 30%
So, I doubt your name. It's half right: you're a fool, but you know exactly what you are doing, you are DELIBERATELY lying
Please state which of the above facts are lies or do you simply not understand the identical policies of the Apple and Google stores.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The recording artist specializes in a musical style that is impractical to perform live, such as [...] forms of electronic dance music.
They can, you know, play in public.
How does one play electronic dance music in public? Do you mean DJing?