Large customers normally have lots of leverage: "if you don't give me a good deal, I will take my business elsewhere". I run an alternative to the Apple App Store for jailbroken iOS devices (Cydia); and, when I have sold software (which I did "at scale" for a decade) I absolutely was forced to cut deals--sometimes ones extremely lucrative for the developer--to keep the business of my largest clients from not only listing their products (which notably were generally ineligible, for technical reasons as opposed to content ones, from being available in the official App Store) with competing stores or even merely accepting payments themselves, but actively <i>building their own competing stores</i>! Think about it: if you are paying a hefty percentage of your revenue to someone else in fees--and are doing enough volume (as you are a large customer)--you can afford to hire an entire team to work on this problem as the App Store is in no way "magic" or anything... at which point you "may as well" offer the service to others in an attempt to cut the margins of your prior fee recipient. It should be the <i>small</i> customers who generally tolerate the (on a percentage basis) higher fees, as they are willing to pay a potentially "hefty cut" for the privilege of using an off-the-shelf, integrated solution that users trust, as the <i>absolute</i> cost of that larger cut is <i>small</i>, and is thereby unlikely to be large enough to make sense expending a bunch of effort building (and marketing) a bespoke solution (that users might not trust anyway); but if you aren't having to fight for the larger customers, something distorted is happening: that Apple and Google (both, which might be surprising to some but maybe less if you read Epic's lessor-known lawsuit against Google surrounding anticompetitive moves Google has taken--and maybe are now attempting to address, but only now--to lock in their Play Store) feel able to <i>specifically</i> squeeze their <i>largest</i> customers with seemingly <i>no ramification</i> is a testament to the power they possess to control and direct the relevant markets from their respective positions.
All their announcements read like fees will be automatically reduced to 15% for the first 1M$, and even the linked article implies that:<p><i>Starting July 1, 2021, the service fee for each developer will be 15% for the first $1M (USD) of earnings you make each year when you sell digital goods or services.</i><p>However, when you read on, you realize that it's an opt-in that you need to take action on:<p><i>To officially enroll for the 15% service fee tier, you must: [list of requirements and steps]</i>
Is nobody else bothered by the fact that it took impending government intervention to cause a change in practices?<p>To me it raises all sorts of questions as to their profit margins, anti-competitive practices, and what the money they're sucking would have done for the other smaller businesses that actually wrote the apps they're profiting off of.<p>When things get this "bad", it seems indicative of a market disorder. There is an imbalance that can't simply be solved via raising capital to start a competing service. The degree of vertical integration in the mobile device market makes supplanting their position all but impossible.
This change will be made effective on July 1.<p>> The service fee for each developer will be 15% for the first $1M (USD) of earnings you make each year when you sell digital goods or services. *<p>* <a href="https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/10632485" rel="nofollow">https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...</a>
When every moderately successful app is launched in a separate company will Google say, "it's the rules that are broken there's nothing wrong with lowering your play store liability by following the rules."
That's such a large cut, I just don't think the Play Store provides nearly that much value. It's also a bit of a strong-armed position anyway, so the fee feels even more disproportionate. You only have to pay them because they've cultivated a mono-store environment for android phones.
This is just more evidence of price fixing[1] by the mobile app distribution and app payments cartel[2] consisting of Apple and Google.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_fixing</a><p>[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel</a>
More on this from The Verge [0].<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22547934/google-play-app-store-fee-15-percent-movies-tv-books-audio" rel="nofollow">https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/24/22547934/google-play-app-...</a>
I always say things like this and get downvotes without comment, but here goes. This is a place where decentralization has a role to play. Things like cryptocurrencies and content-centric networking, databases and search.<p>In my opinion it should be possible to create an app store that actually isn't owned by any particular company but runs on a large network of peers and uses payments in cryptocurrency.
Cool! And when they do finally get hit with a healthy dose of antitrust regulation, they'll be forced to lower the fee (even more than this) for <i>everyone</i> in order to stay competitive.
Context: US Congress is discussing a bill that will force Play Store to act like a platform (meaning no cut at all if you choose to use another form of payment)<p><a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/here-comes-the-law-eb302a46" rel="nofollow">https://world.hey.com/dhh/here-comes-the-law-eb302a46</a>