Comment by pmontra
5 days ago
Ultimately all the money Apple is making from the store comes from the pockets of people. If apps won't have to pay a cut to Apple, people would be left with more money in their pockets.
If all apps were free and no sales would be forced to go through those apps, Apple still sells the phones and makes money from them. Would it be left with less money? Not my problem. Would it increase the cost of phones (maybe only in the EU) to compensate the missing revenues? Fair. Let's see how it affects sales.
> Would it increase the cost of phones (maybe only in the EU) to compensate the missing revenues?
Probably not "fair" since the EU seems opposed to their "core technology fee", which is (supposedly) a fee to the developers to compensate for the missing revenues. And if the EU allowed raising prices in EU counties to offset that lost revenue, but didn't allow the core tech fee, that would effectively be the EU outlawing making your money on software rather than on hardware. It seems more likely the EU would just demand continued subsidized access to the same services, like they already did with facebook.
> EU would just demand continued subsidized access
No. Apple is free to charge the same "core technology fee" to developers who choose to release apps on the Apple Appstore. The only issue the EU has is how Apple uses the fee to give themselves an advantage.
The EU creates laws to prevent predatory behaviour from corporations. It isn't the EU's job to come up with an alternative business model that still makes Apple the same amount of money.