> ... this seems worse than the original restrictions.
This is worse from the original restrictions _specifically_ because the original restrictions were chosen to simplify from this sort of scenario.
If Apple says all app purchases and purchases of digital goods/services within the app are subject to the 15/30%, and those payments are always made through Apple, then Apple can check for non-compliance with the contract terms up-front (via App Store review) and then there are no separate books to audit, there is no commingling of revenue from in-app purchases vs independent web purchases or purchases made on other platforms, and so on. No need to audit the company's books, because they are using Apple's books.
It is hard to take Apple to task for charging too much, because the 30% ceiling and who pays it has effectively been the same since day 1 of the App Store. They have only created special cases to reduce that percentage (small business program, multi-year subscriptions).
Regulators can say that you can't block other companies from the "iPhone in-app payment for digital goods" market without being anti-competitive, but it is much more onerous to force a company to continue to provide a set of services (maintaining developer tools and SDKs, reviewing and signing binaries, providing backward compatibility in new OS versions) but for a fee schedule determined by regulators.
> Taking a commission from a company that’s already paying for payment processing can’t possibly be seen as reasonable.
Why not?
There's a decades-running assumption by some that Apple was a ridiculously expensive payment processor, only existing because they gave you no other choice than to use them for certain things (and outright forbade you from using them for others).
But Apple provides other services and access to developers per a financial agreement, and was doing payment processing to meter the revenue split.
The regulator argument is that Apple is blocking other companies from taking in-app revenue for digital services. Apple has now split that out in a few markets for companies willing to take on such complexity.
IMHO the only apps I think actually have benefited from the split are dating apps in the Netherlands - because quite frankly the way many dating services charge people is user hostile and/or discriminatory.
> Regulators can say that you can't block other companies from the "iPhone in-app payment for digital goods" market without being anti-competitive, but it is much more onerous to force a company to continue to provide a set of services (maintaining developer tools and SDKs, reviewing and signing binaries, providing backward compatibility in new OS versions) but for a fee schedule determined by regulators.
A rather obvious thing they could do is just prohibit the fee from being a percent of the developer's revenue. If Apple wants to charge everyone $1000 for a copy of Xcode and the iOS SDK, go to town. But then, people should be able to make competing developer tools and SDKs for iOS, and have competing stores where someone other than Apple is doing the reviews etc.
The main issue isn't even what they're charging, it's that they constrain you from using the alternatives that would induce them to charge less via competitive pressure.
This is worse from the original restrictions _specifically_ because the original restrictions were chosen to simplify from this sort of scenario.
If Apple says all app purchases and purchases of digital goods/services within the app are subject to the 15/30%, and those payments are always made through Apple, then Apple can check for non-compliance with the contract terms up-front (via App Store review) and then there are no separate books to audit, there is no commingling of revenue from in-app purchases vs independent web purchases or purchases made on other platforms, and so on. No need to audit the company's books, because they are using Apple's books.
It is hard to take Apple to task for charging too much, because the 30% ceiling and who pays it has effectively been the same since day 1 of the App Store. They have only created special cases to reduce that percentage (small business program, multi-year subscriptions).
Regulators can say that you can't block other companies from the "iPhone in-app payment for digital goods" market without being anti-competitive, but it is much more onerous to force a company to continue to provide a set of services (maintaining developer tools and SDKs, reviewing and signing binaries, providing backward compatibility in new OS versions) but for a fee schedule determined by regulators.
> Taking a commission from a company that’s already paying for payment processing can’t possibly be seen as reasonable.
Why not?
There's a decades-running assumption by some that Apple was a ridiculously expensive payment processor, only existing because they gave you no other choice than to use them for certain things (and outright forbade you from using them for others).
But Apple provides other services and access to developers per a financial agreement, and was doing payment processing to meter the revenue split.
The regulator argument is that Apple is blocking other companies from taking in-app revenue for digital services. Apple has now split that out in a few markets for companies willing to take on such complexity.
IMHO the only apps I think actually have benefited from the split are dating apps in the Netherlands - because quite frankly the way many dating services charge people is user hostile and/or discriminatory.