Comment by spacebanana7
13 hours ago
Tim Cook is usually good at politics, which doesn't seem to be the case here. Nobody other some CNBC guests really gets too upset when they take 30% from tinder, music or mobile gaming companies. And those types of apps run by unpopular large companies make up the majority of App Store revenue.
However, newspapers and content creators are popular in a way that carries political weight. It'd be wise for Apple exempt these categories and write off the few hundred million in forgone revenue as a political expense.
For example allowing the NYT or Joe Rogan to have nice paid apps with no fees would be a much more effective use of money than the same amount in political donations.
Apple doesn't do partner exceptions (one of the complaints Epic had about working with them is that Apple wouldn't negotiate lower rates with companies, unlike the game consoles.)
They do have carve outs in the agreement, such as the 'reader' exception. Newspapers I believe also fall under the 'reader' exception.
I have suspected for a while that the 15%-after-the-first-year subscription rate drop was a carve out targeted specifically at trying to retain Netflix IAP. However, Netflix was able to operate without IAP because of the "reader" exception.