Comment by _Algernon_
5 days ago
How much additional profit have they made based on their malicious compliance? I bet it dwarfs this fine.
5 days ago
How much additional profit have they made based on their malicious compliance? I bet it dwarfs this fine.
That is not so clear. Appstore revenue is ~ $100 billion/y, but Apple makes less than 30% from that.
So the question is: Would more convincing compliance have cost Apple more than single digit percentage decreases in Appstore sales? Comparing the F-Droid vs Playstore situation, this seems unlikely to me.
Apple’s take is 30%, but they have expenses that have to be covered by that. The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
If Apple is so bad at this that they have to charge 30%, they should have failed in the free market to a competitor that can do the same or better for 3%. However, Apple has prevented that, not by being better or cheaper, but by implementing DRM that locks users out from having a choice (and the market as a whole ended up being a duopoly with cartel-like pricing).
Whether Apple can be cheaper isn't really the point (they should be, digital services are a very high margin business). It's that they're anti-competitive to the point that the market for paid apps and in-app payments became inefficient (in a financial sense).
> The profit if any would be much less than $30bn.
It doesn't cost that much to maintain and run the appstore, it is almost all profits.
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