3) The reason for the disparity is 10 million installs, which exceeds the 1 million threshold to pay €0.50/install. If you charge €1/install then you're paying 50% to Apple for that fee. If you charge €2/install then you'd be paying 25% to Apple because the fee is flat.
4) This atrocity was written and mandated by Apple
Of course people will still not boycott them. They're no better than Microsoft was in the 90's. Not sure if it comes at that high level of a company or they're not all that different to begin with.
They won't boycott them because 99.999% of people aren't mobile devs, and none of this impacts them in the slightest. It didn't impact them when the price was 30% of anything over $1 mil, it doesn't impact them now. The average consumer of Apple products doesn't even care about side-loading, although I'm sure a significant minority is very pleased that it's an option going forward.
I really like this site, but people do sometimes lose sight of the world they live in vs the world most people inhabit.
The pricing model very much impacts users, because it incentivizes higher app prices, as well as subscriptions over one-time purchases. Users certainly don’t like subscriptions (but Apple loves those).
Whether third parties support Apple Pay or not is completely orthogonal to that pricing model. I use Apple Pay on web sites that have nothing to do with apps or app stores.
Developers have been showing for a LONG time that they're long on talk of boycotts, and short on action. I really doubt that's going to change, the industry is mostly crabs in a bucket.
Re 3: This means that Apple incentivizes developers against low app prices, in order for them to not lose more than half of the revenue to Apple once the million is reached. In addition, since the fee is yearly recurring, this incentivizes subscriptions over one-time purchases. The pricing model is not in consumers’ interests.
> 2) The new terms have not been approved by the EU
I can't imagine how these terms won't eventually swatted down as malicious compliance. I'd really like to see Apple fined something like 20% of global revenue, or something like that. Teach them a lesson, seems like they need one.
It's a valid criticism of the new terms. A developer-friendly (and dare I say, user-friendly) fee structure would not have any cases where Apple takes 62% of revenue. Any fee structure so maliciously structured that this edge case exists, deserves such criticism.
> only one of them gives Apple a cut of $6.2M. Every other possible way gives Apple a lot less.
I'll assume good faith and assume that's not a lie, just a misunderstanding. The correct understanding is that the $.50 is a flat fee per install, and Apple's share increases as the price decreases.
If you sell the app for $.55, Apple gets all ten mil. If you sell the app for less, you owe Apple even more than users paid.
The headline is true for the 99% of apps that cost a dollar or less. If they succeed and make ten mil, Apple takes at least 62%.
If you'd like to explain why you think that statement is false, with actual details and numbers, I'll consider it. As far as I can tell, it is true, and you've provided no evidence for your claim.
That's true but it doesn't contradict my point about a $1 app with 10 million installs.
In any case, a free app can always be released under the current terms.
I think the obvious point is that free to consumer apps still cost something in terms of the platform. It has been a common complaint in the past that apps like Uber or Facebook have a huge number of installs but don't pay anything. This simply brings transparency to that.
Except it can't "always" be released under the current terms. If the developer has ever released an app under the new terms, they're forced into them for all their future apps, forever. Likewise if they ever intend to release a different app under the new terms, all their old apps would be retroactively moved to the new terms.
The irrevocable and all-or-nothing aspect will make it pretty much impossible for any serious developer to ever choose the new terms. Just as Apple intended.
And most card payment processors will charge you more than 30% commission if you sell a product for $1. The numbers are specifically picked to make it look bad without providing a clear disclosure.
Is it some custom pricing plan? I only saw the IAP program with those fees but it’s still a waitlist. Very interested to find a 10% all-in fee on $1-$10 transactions for arbitrary credit card purchases.
I can’t say I’m a fan of the pricing model, but the linked tweet makes specific choices regarding the number of installs, which in turn determines the pricing.
The tweet has 10M installs, where each one makes a $1. 5M installs where each one produces $2 in revenue results in a smaller cut by Apple. 20M installs at $0.50 results in a larger cut.
Not even per release, which could've been justified by what they said about automated and manual reviews of apps submitted to _third party marketplaces_.
I didn't see specific CAC or ARPU numbers. Below a certain threshold, not many apps are able to sustain themselves. This noise appears to be a strawman assuming a very cheap app to make the numbers fail.
This is Apple’s way of saying “we got billions in our war chest to keep on playing law games and paying some millions in fine but we’ll get what we want!”
I'm not sure why some call the authors choice of 1$ per install disingenuous. Wouldn't that be the averaged out profit per app when you combine paying and non paying users?
Like for each app which costs 5$ I'd expect that there's at least 5 non-paying users using the free version.
Update: Also, the revenue per app doesn't affect the 0.5$ per app install fee. Meaning, if the app is making less than 0.5$ per install, averaged over free + paying users, then one would just be loosing money...
And the conclusion this guy makes is "I will never launch an app in Europe". I am speechless. This is the same guy charging $7500 a month for 60 minutes of consulting, promising $1M ARR for your app. And him, being supposed to know what exactly Apple meant by "we are protecting our users from dangers and malwares imposed to our users by the EU and DMA", blindly shills for the top tier anti consumer comapny of the century. And there are lots of people like this just walking around, making decisions, driving, voting and posting on social media!
This feels akin to the folks who go and price out a Mac with all the options and complain. The whole setup here is to generate a weird scenario / social media response and doesn't reflect what you would actually do.
1) The new terms are opt-in
2) The new terms have not been approved by the EU
3) The reason for the disparity is 10 million installs, which exceeds the 1 million threshold to pay €0.50/install. If you charge €1/install then you're paying 50% to Apple for that fee. If you charge €2/install then you'd be paying 25% to Apple because the fee is flat.